break the spell or more of the same? - ciase€¦ · this latest edition of the “el embrujo”...

1Break the spell or more of the same?

22 Break the spell or more of the same? 3

Colombian Platform for Human Rights,

Democracy and Development

Secretaría Técnica Corporación Cactus

Correo electrónico: [email protected]

Carrera 25 Nº 51-37, oficina 301

Tels.: (571) 345 83 40 - (571) 345 83 29

Comité Editorial:

Corporación Cactus, Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo (Cajar),

Instituto Latinoamericano de Servicios Legales Alternativos (ILSA)

Edición:

Carlos Enrique Angarita

Foto carátula:

Jesús Abad Colorado

Fernanda Pineda Palencia

Caricaturas:

Vladdo: Cortesía Revista Semana – Publicaciones Semana S.A.

Antonio Caballero: Revista Semana – Publicaciones Semana S.A.

Chócolo: Cortesía del autor

Preparación editorial:

Marta Rojas

Traducción:

Luke Holland

Diseño:

Paola Escobar

Versión impresa en español:

Ediciones Antropos

Bogotá, Colombia, Noviembre de 2009

Los artículos que aparecen en este libro son responsabilidad de sus autores. Se permite la reproducción parcial o total de esta obra, en cualquier formato, mecánico o digital, siempre y cuando no se modifique su contenido, se res-pete su autoría y se mantenga esta nota.


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6 Presentation

PART 1: CONTEXT

11 The Democratic Security Policy in its regional context: old affinities with the North, new contradictions with the Southr Consuelo Ahumada

19 The bankers get rich while misery spreads Jorge Iván González

24 In time of crisis, the bank doesn’t serve Juan Diego Restrepo E. (Chronicle)

PART 2: THE POLITICAL REGIME

33 The regression of a country Camilo Castellanos

45 Neither state of opinion, nor rule of law: a state of loyalty Alejandro Mantilla Quijano

59 Between a gang of thieves and their subjects: ethical questions in the era of “democratic security” Carlos E. Angarita S.

68 “They have money and they want more”: Uribe’s brothers and the land of Mosquera Sandra Yanneth García Herrera (Chronicle)

PART 3: DEMOCRATIC SECURITY?

75 Concealment techniques: new tendencies in extrajudicial executions in Colombia Alberto Yepes, Coordinación Colombia Europa Estados Unidos

93 “Parapolitics”, a phenomenon which refuses to disappear León Valencia, Oscar Fernando Sevillano

109 Extradition and other mechanisms of impunity: monitoring the “Justice and Peace Law” José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective

116 It is dangerous to think differently, or to show dissent for governmental policies Hollman Morris (Chronicle)

120 “Our sons are innocent workers, not delinquents or guerrillas” Nicolás Murillo Faucher (Chronicle)

PART 4: COMMODIFICATION OF THE TERRITORY

126 Rural and food issues under the Uribe government Juan Carlos Morales González

139 The human right to water, environmental crisis and social mobilisation Rafael Colmenares Faccini

149 Commodifying public goods: deepening exclusion and poverty An analysis of waste management policy during the Álvaro Uribe government Federico Parra

160 African palm: the embargoed prosperity of Colombia’s Northern Coast Ricardo León Cruz (Chronicle)

166 Chocó refuses to starve to death Juan Diego Restrepo (Chronicle)

PART 5: COMMUNITIES

174 The situation of women Corporación Cactus, Tribunal de Mujeres y DESC. The “My rights Are Non-Negotiable” Campaign

184 “With a stable job everything would change for me” Omaira Páez (Chronicle)

188 A policy of systematic exclusion: the deficit of decent jobs facing Colombian workers and their union organisations Colombian Campaign for Decent Jobs

204 Cane cutters: slavery or mechanisation in times of dictatorship Berenice Celeyta (Chronicle)

208 Indigenous peoples, their traditional territories and capital’s new forms of appropriation Mauricio Caviedes

218 Gathering our determination to work “en Minga” Jorge Caballero (Chronicle)

PART 6: KEEPING HOPE ALIVE

226 Social activism in Colombia, 2002-2009 Social Movements Team-Cinep (Centre for Investigation and Popular Education)

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Chronicles

6 7Break the spell or more of the same?

This latest edition of the “El Embrujo” (“The Spell”) series is extensive and rich in content. We offer readers, both within the country and at the international level, analysis of the context and characteristics of the current political regime in Colombia, and its strategies of consolidation, along with studies of the the structural policies which have been driven forward by the governments of Álvaro Uribe Vélez. We also offer examination of the impacts of the Democratic Security policy on specific populations and the expressions of resistance that have arisen from the social movement. Furthermore, throughout the doc-ument there are chronicles of personal experiences and testimonies from individuals and communities that show, in more direct and vital language, the human experience of this national, regional and local panorama.

With regard to CONTEXT, between combatants and bankers, the protagonism of two types of actors be-comes evident. Both globally and regionally they have been imposing their dynamics, within which Colombian society and its government play a decisive role. In this regard, Consuelo Ahumada considers that, despite the change of administration in the United States, the new government of Barack Obama continues with the strat-egies of his predecessor with respect to Latin America and the Andean region and, “for this reason, despite the important differences that exist between the current ad-ministrations of the United States and Colombia, there has been an understanding that they will continue with the projects of the Northern country in the region. The agreement to deepen military cooperation between the two countries should be understood within this frame-work.” At the same time, alongside the war strategies, the economy deepens its “speculative nature”, which in the judgment of Jorge Iván González has impeded the instal-lation of a “stable productive structure” in our country.

With respect to the Colombian POLITICAL REGIME, of old and dark alliances, the authors clarify how long-standing politicians have been many years in the making and how they have consolidated their positions and radi-calised their approaches during the “democratic security” era. Camilo Castellanos employs the thesis of Luis Jorge Garay which describes the “coopted reconfiguration of the state” by a narco-political and paramilitary mafia, which has been gestating for more than two decades, and concludes that this entity has today become a power bloc which has led to “Colombia changing regressively in the first decade of the 21st century”. In the same sense, Alejandro Mantilla affirms that the current regime in Co-lombia is distinguished by its premodern character given that “… does not need from the public sphere (…) in-stead the key is loyalty to the head of state”. This has all been possible, as argued by Carlos Enrique Angarita, thanks to the fact that the current government managed to incorporate into its political functioning an ethos that corresponds to the perspective of “the ethics of the gang of thieves” described by Plato.

In analysing the immoral STRATEGIES of the Demo-cratic Security regime, it is concluded that it neither of-fers security nor is it democratic. One of these strategies involves successive political reforms and the reform of the justice system (carried before the Congress of the Republic by the National Executive), with the aim of safe-guarding the many politicians close to the government who have faced judicial action, and to preserve the new “parapolitical” map of the country, as is demonstrated by León Valencia and Oscar Fernando Sevillano. To all this is added the new “techniques of concealment” regarding violations of human rights and crimes against humanity carried out by the government, such as “false positives”,

in accordance with the complaint lodged by the Coor-dinación Colombia-Europa-Estados Unidos Roundtable on Extrajudicial Executions. This section is completed by the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, which indi-cates how, in the framework of the Justice and Peace Law, the government has configured a “route of impunity, with which it has impeded the appropriate judicial processing of crimes against humanity within Colombian jurisdiction. This is underpinned by the employment of extradition as a juridical mechanism which is added to other strategies of impunity, carried forward since 2002.”

Behind all this is the purpose of making possible significant economic projects committing the strategic recourses, which are public in character, which exist in our TERRITORY. A round condemnation of these actions comes under the banner “neither bought, nor sold”. “In the case of rural policy… the current government de-signed a framework which seeks, above all, to benefit the agroindustrial and transnational sectors, along with large landowners, concentrating factors of production, pro-duction itself and the income of the sector”, as affirmed by Juan Carlos Morales. Moreover, Rafael Colmenares ar-gues that “in Colombia, for some time now, one of the most aggressive policies of commodification and priva-tisation of the water and sewage services has been pur-sued, with projections expanding towards control of the sources of water… in a geopolitical context character-ised by the tendency towards growing scarcity of water, which primarily affects the countries of the First World”. Finally, in another article, Federico Parra reveals how “the commodification of public goods associated with pow-erful private actors has been reaffirmed by the govern-ment of Álvaro Uribe Vélez as in none other, through the strengthening of the image of the state-public linked to private concessions, ceding social functions of the state to the market”.

The nefarious effects of the public policies of the cur-rent bloc in power have not only fallen on the environ-ment, but also on majority groups in our society, of which a few significant SPECIFIC COMMUNITIES are examined. These, in resistance, declare: “we still exist”. Thus, we find women’s organisations observing that, despite the presence of the Presidential Council for the Equality of Women, this body “has not carried out monitoring of the

key issues of labour reform, political reform, the Justice and Peace Law, the law of victims, the negotiation of free trade agreements”, thereby facilitating the rise in discrim-ination against women and the violation of their rights. Additionally, as is well demonstrated by José Luciano Sanín and Juan Bernardo Rosado, “in the last seven years the imbalance between the rights of businesses and the rights of workers has become sharper”, resulting in an “exclusive labour market” with 18 million workers living in poverty. With all this in mind, Mauricio Cavieded re-members that “in the moment when the most historically relevant social movements seem to have been weakened by repression and internal contradictions, some authors consider the indigenous movement and the mobilisation it leads to represent a barrier to the expansion of capital-ism, through the exercise of autonomy in its territories and the strengthening of articulation with other social sectors”.

In conclusion, we affirm that there is still HOPE. This is the finding of a detailed analysis of the social mobilisa-tions that took place between 2002 and 2009, presented by the Social Movements Team-Cinep. This organisation suggests that the actions identified in the study have the “effect of placing in evidence the networks of social, eco-nomic, political and cultural conflicts which exist, even though governmental and business bodies attempt to evade or deny, and not to process them”.

From the journey undertaken here, two major ele-ments which, in our judgment, play the central role in the Colombian reality, emerge. Within this context we aim to defend the necessary validity of human rights: on one hand, the existence of a strong and shameful regime, the like of which has never been seen in our country and which has been worryingly accepted with jubilation by many of its victims; and on the other, the resistance, re-bellion and creativity of diverse sectors of society which express themselves, with a firm and profound conviction, as living subjects who believe in the possibility of reor-ganising hope.

Technical Secretariat, Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development Corporación Cactus

Presentation

INDEX


The Democratic Security Policy in its regional context: old affinities with the North, new contradictions with the South Consuelo Ahumada

The bankers get rich while misery spreads Jorge Iván González

In time of crisis, the bank doesn’t serve (Chronicle) Juan Diego Restrepo E.

11

19

24

“It would be most convenient for Uribe to be re-elected

again…

let’s see if we can get rid of the poor once and for all”

INDEX


* Professor, Faculty of International Relations and Political Sciences, University Javeriana, PhD in Political Science, New York Univer-sity.

The Democratic Security Policy in its regional context: old affinities with the North, new contradictions with the SouthConsuelo Ahumada*

Over the course of the first decade of the century, the governments of Latin America, and in particular the Andean countries, have undergone something of an about-face. One after another alternative governments have sprung up and consolidated themselves, thanks to what have be-come known as the “Winds of the South”. These winds have gathered up the discontent felt by large sectors of the population in the face of the neoliberal policies implemented at the end of the 1980s.

In the North there have also been significant changes in the same period. After the September 11 attacks in 2002, the war on terror con-solidated the hegemonic power of the United States and its intervention in all matters affecting the Andean region began to rise. Thus, the war on drugs, first declared at the end of the 1980s, was subordinated to a new global crusade, while competition between the powerful countries for control of the world’s resources and markets intensified. This process was facilitated by old and new international organisms, in particular the World Trade Organisation, which was designed to serve the interests of these countries.

Seven years later, the world financial crisis, preceded by the sub-prime mortgage fiasco in the United States, scuppered the postulation of neoliberalism and became a decisive factor in the electoral victory of Barack Obama. Simultaneously, it spelled the end of the recent wave of neoconservative fascism which had driven the doctrine of preventive war and imperialist unilateralism. This tendency defended and practiced the open violation of the global legal order and stood in opposition to the signing of diverse international treaties. Against this backdrop, the new US leadership insisted, from its candidacy, on the need to restore adher-ence to international law and give priority to multilateralism and dialogue on the use of military force. That is to say, to the peaceful resolution

INDEX

1212 The Democratic Security Policy in its regional context 13Break the spell or more of the same? 13

of global conflicts. Nonetheless, even though Obama’s triumph unquestionably marked a turning point in inter-national relations at a global scale, it cannot be ignored that he was chosen to govern the most powerful country in the world at a time of bitter crisis, when the aggres-sion of empires generally becomes more intense. For this reason, looking beyond diplomatic warming towards some countries of the continent, and promises of change with regard to its relations with the region, the first nine months of the new government have seen a continuation of the controversial strategies for Latin America set in motion by Bush.

But while the rest of the region was generating pro-cesses of political and social change, Colombia has been moving in the opposite direction. In 2002 Alvaro Uribe, in his first term as president, imposed his “Democratic Se-curity” project. His electoral triumph was possible thanks to the fatigue and exasperation felt by diverse sectors of the population in response to the magnitude the armed conflict had taken on. More than anything else, however, his victory was a rejection of the failed policy of dialogue with FARC that was pursued by his predecessor Andrés Pastrana, and the excesses of that organisation. In 2006 the Colombian president won a second term and, at the time of writing, October 2009, the government is employ-ing every possible device, legal and illegal, to overcome the institutional and political obstacles to a referendum that would allow it to remain in power for a third con-secutive term.

The central component of the Democratic Security Policy has been the military response to the situation of violence, in a clear articulation of the anti-terrorist crusade which the White House promoted during both Bush mandates. In fact, Uribe became Bush’s principal ally on the continent and the focal point for his strate-gies in the unsettled Andean region. In this regard, the security strategy developed by the Colombian govern-ment has been the principal source of discord among the Andean countries, especially Venezuela and Ecuador. Diplomatic and political relations with both countries have been severely affected in recent times as a result of the regional projection of policies derived from the Uribe political project.

In effect, this project, which starts out by denying the existence of an armed conflict in the country, has been

developed through the destruction of the rule of law and the continuous violation of fundamental human rights, along with continuous confrontation with judicial pow-er. It has also involved numerous scandals, such as the “parapolitics” fiasco, extrajudicial executions - wrongly dubbed “false positives” - and the interception of op-position telephone calls by the DAS, to mention just a few of the most famous and controversial. There are valid reasons, therefore, to suggest that a third term for Uribe would bring with it a substantial reduction in minimum democratic guarantees, along with further deterioration of relations with other countries in the region.

This article aims to explore in greater depth the cen-tral issues of the regional and international situation described above. Some of the principal components of the security strategy set out by Bush and continued by Obama in the Andean region, with Colombia as its fo-cal point, will be explored. The difficulties generated with the rest of the region as a consequence of these policies will also be analysed.

The United States’ security strategies in the Andean region

Over the course of the current century, the central strate-gies of the United States in the Andean region have flowed from the priorities of the National Security Strategy, bet-ter known as the Bush Doctrine, approved by Congress in September 2002, one year after the terrorist attacks. Said strategies combine deepening of neoliberal policies with the war on drugs and terrorism. The bilateral and re-gional commercial agreements signed by the administra-tion with the governments of Peru and Colombia and the countries of Central America, along with the Dominican Republic, the two phases of Plan Colombia, the Andean Regional Initiative, the Patriot Act and, more recently, the military cooperation agreement between Colombia and the United States, which gives the US access to seven military bases, all respond to these objectives.

The control of resources

As part of the bitter economic and commercial confron-tation which has unfolded between the industrialised countries in recent decades, the control of strategic

natural resources has become fundamental, as argued by Michel Klare:

The wars pursued for resources in the post-Cold War world are not isolated or random events. On the contrary, they are a complex which forms part of a wider geopolitical framework (…) the wars of the future will, on a massive scale, take as their objective the possession and control of essential economic goods, and in particular the resources necessary for the functioning of modern industrial societies (Klare, 2001: 35).

In this respect, petroleum remains the foundation of the global economy, to the point of representing 40% of the planet’s energy. The industrialised countries depend more and more on supplies of crude from the producing countries and the United States has the highest level of dependency in this sense. For this reason, the provision of crude was declared an issue of national security in this country.

Without a doubt, the strategic tendency towards controlling the energy sources of the entire world, and the imperial search for new resources, was strongly stimulated by the arrival in the White House of the “oil hawks”, representing the most conservative wing of the Republican Party. Their main spokesmen are ex-President Bush and the senior ranks of his former government. The Cheney report, published in 2001 and written by the then Vice-President of the same name, spoke for the first time of the necessity to acquire new petrol reserves and proposed a double strategy aimed at responding to ris-ing requirements over the following 25 years. Among the measures announced were greater geographical diversi-fication of petrol imports, in order to reduce the impact of turbulence in the Middle East, a region described as chronically unstable. It was recommended that produc-tion in the Caspian Sea, Sub-Saharan Africa and the G3 of Latin America be increased. (Ragozzino, 2003: 56).

With respect to the American continent, Mexico, Ven-ezuela and Colombia occupy third, fourth and seventh place respectively in the rankings of oil suppliers to the United States. They have proven reserves of 148 billion barrels, and it is projected that this figure will double over the next 20 years, with production levels of 10 mil-lion barrels a day. Thanks to their proximity to the North, these countries offer great advantages. In accordance

with information supplied by the Italian journalist Gug-lielmo Ragozzino, in 2000 the principal providers of pe-troleum to the United States were Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Venezuela, with Nigeria, Iraq and Colombia also appearing in the top ten (Ibid: 57). In synthesis, the Western hemisphere provides half the imports of the US. Venezuela is the world’s fifth largest petroleum producer, and it is also the country with the largest heavy crude reserves in the world, and a founding member of OPEC. It has proven reserves of 77.7 billion barrels and the US market currently absorbs about 59% of Venezuelan pe-troleum, which accounts for between 13% and 17% of US needs. Colombia has proven reserves of around 1.7 billion barrels. However, the potential deposits, especial-ly on the border with Venezuela and the department of Putumayo, on the border with Ecuador, are much more important. The latter has reserves of 2.1 billion barrels, with total production which reached 415,000 barrels a day in 2001. Exploitation is located, in large part, in east-ern Amazonia, in the province of Oriente (Ivekovic, 2003: 49). As a result, US interest in controlling the Amazon basin, which was already extremely valuable thanks to its enormous biodiversity, has risen further.

The case of Venezuela deserves special attention. Despite the political tensions with the United States, un-leashed during the Bush administration and continued by the current administration, commercial exchange be-tween the two countries rose to US $70 billion in 2008, 40% of which was accounted for by petroleum sales, according to preliminary figures presented by the Ven-ezuelan-American Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Venezuela sells between 1.3 and 1.5 million barrels of oil a day to the Northern country. However, in 2009 a re-duction of this figure is predicted, due to the fall in the international price of crude.

It is clear, then, that Venezuelan oil is fundamental for the United States. In this country the petrol company Citgo, a subsidiary of the state firm Petroleos de Ven-ezuela SA (PDVSA), operates with a network of 13,100 service stations distributed throughout the territory of the country. According to the Department of Commerce, Venezuela’s commercial surplus with this country, which in 1999 was US $3.545 billion, rose to US $12.539 in 2003 and US $24.322 in 2006, the last year for which there is data available. Oil exports from the Caribbean country to


the United States alone reached around US $37 billion in 2006. Exports of goods and services from the United States to Venezuela rose from US $9.795 billion in 1999 to over US $15 billion in 2006. The United States is Ven-ezuela’s largest supplier of dairy products, wheat, corn, meat and vegetable oil, representing 35% of the coun-try’s consumption of these goods. (Mora, 2009).

Oil has been a key factor in the project of alterna-tive integration promoted by Hugo Chávez. Thus, within the framework of ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas), the creation of Petroamérica, conceived as a proposal for energy integration among all the countries of the continent, built on the basis of the principles of soli-darity and complementarity “in the just and democratic use of resources in the development of the peoples,” should be underlined. This project brings together three regional energy integration initiatives: Petrosur, Petrocar-ibe and the Andean Community of Nations and proposes to use energy sovereignty as the motor for endogenous development, In this vein, its aims to integrate the oil energy companies of Latin America and the Caribbean in order to facilitate joint investment in exploration, exploi-tation, and commercialisation of oil and natural gas.

Additionally, the Venezuelan regime has developed a strategy of making China the principal energy partner of the country, with the goal of relegating the US to second place. At the end of March 2007, it announced a series of oil agreements with the Asian giant, with a value of ap-proximately US $13 billion. The objective of the Venezu-elan government is to supply China one million barrels of oil a day by 2012. Thus far, Venezuelan crude exports to China have risen from 12,000 barrels a day in 2003 to 150,000 in 2007.

With respect to this matter, the government of Barack Obama has demonstrated from the outset its intention to reduce oil dependency and promote the use of low consumption energies with the objective of combating climate change and generating millions of jobs. On the former, it has shown its interest in reaching a commercial agreement with the Brazilian government, which would raise supplies of oil and its derivatives from this country. The US would thus reduce imports of oil from Venezuela.

With respect to the second point, the president an-nounced a rise in the budget to expand the solar and

geothermic energy industries, in which some US $467 million, from a US $787 billion stimulus package, will be invested. Finally, the new government is also pushing for the prompt development and commercialisation of new types of biofuels. It has thus declared that dependency on foreign crude and climate change are urgent threats to the national security of the United States. “We are not going to be hostages to resources that are running out, and to a world that is getting hotter” affirmed the presi-dent at the beginning of his tenure. The announcement of these strategic moves was qualified as a radical de-parture from the energy policies of the Bush administra-tion, and as an unequivocal sign that the United States, the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses after China, would seek to reduce the emissions responsible for global warming. However, as with other issues, the most important decisions in this regard have not yet been taken.

The military industry and spending

The military industry and spending are fundamental for the consolidation of US hegemonic power. The country, without doubt the most powerful in the history of hu-manity, is the largest arms producer in the world and also has the largest military budget. The military-industrial complex has developed impressively, especially during the global crusade against terrorism. In 2003, when Iraq was invaded, the budget for the sector was US $383 bil-lion, a rise of US $50 billion on 2002. This figure does not include other resources, such as the US $16.8 bil-lion for nuclear warheads coming from the Department of Energy, or US $146 million spent on preventing bio-logical terrorism which is assigned by the Department of Agriculture. This budget was of such magnitude that it doubled the amount spent by the 15 countries of the Eu-ropean Union. It was affirmed that if the trend continued, US military spending would soon be equal to that of all of the other countries of the world put together. In total, the spend went up by about 60% from when Bush took the presidency in 2001, without including the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The trend of rising military spending has continued. In accordance with the annual report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), in 2008 global spending on military armaments went up 4%,

reaching US $1,464 billion. Of this figure, US $600 bil-lion corresponded to the United States, 58% of the to-tal spending of the last decade. China occupied second place, with US $84.9 billion, followed by France (US $65.7 billion), the UK (US $65.3 billion) and Russia (US $58.6 billion). These countries are followed in the rankings by Germany, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia and India. The report emphasises rises in military spending in countries like Iran, Israel, Brazil, South Korea and Algeria. According to data in the same report, the 100 largest armaments man-ufacturers, excluding the Chinese, in 2007 sold weapons to a value of US $347 billion, which represents an 11% increase on the previous year.

Amidst the financial crisis, neoconservatives and military contractors in the US continue to pressurise Congress to raise the armed forces budget. They have insisted that billions of dollars from the economic stimu-lus package be earmarked for defense, with the argument that an increase in government contracts with military businesses will boost job creation.

On the other hand, the Office of Management and Budget at the White House stipulated that the Depart-ment of Defense budget be set at US $527 billion for 2010, which represents a 10% fall on what was recom-mended the previous year by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This figure did not include the US $170 billion assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The anti-narcotics and anti-terrorist strategy

Plan Colombia, in its two phases, provoked national, region-al and international controversy from the moment it was an-nounced and presented to the US Congress for approval in October 1999. One of the most questioned aspects of the plan has been the anti-narcotics strategy, which centers on the fumigation or aerial spraying of areas used for illicit cul-tivation. The serious impacts this has on living conditions and the health of the population, destroying the environ-ment, crops necessary for survival and sources of water, has been the object of continuous criticism in the international arena. The nefarious impact on social conditions in such re-gions, which is expressed in increased forced displacement of entire families into neighbouring countries, especially Ec-uador, must also be recognised.

In January 2007, the Colombian government an-nounced the beginning of Phase II of Plan Colombia,

conceived as a six-year project (2007-2013) which was unveiled with the name “The Strategy for Strengthening Democracy and Social Development”. The new plan will require US $43.837 billion, a figure six times higher than that of the first phase. In large part, as with the previ-ous case, the resources announced by the government are the same included in the Development Plan and the national government’s budget. That is to say, the greater part of this investment will be covered by Colombian tax-payers and social investment will therefore be reduced.

The breakdown of diplomatic relations between Ecuador and Colombia stems fundamentally from the implementation of the anti-narcotics and anti-terrorist strategy. On 1 March 2008, the Colombia Army made an incursion over the border of its neighbour to attack the camp of Raul Reyes, then FARC’s second-in-command. This act provoked the greatest regional crisis of recent decades, as Ecuador, Venezuela and Nicaragua all broke off diplomatic relations with the Uribe government. Ad-ditionally, at a meeting of the Rio Group, staged a few days later in the city of Santa Domingo, rejection of Co-lombia’s violation of Ecuadorian territory and support for the country that had been victim of the aggression, was much in evidence. Some time later, as the contro-versy developed, the Ecuadorian government decided to make a formal complaint at the International Court in the Hague concerning the effects of aerial fumigation using the herbicide glyphosate which Colombia was carrying out along the border of the two countries.

A crucial factor in the regional conflict has been the position of neighbouring countries regarding FARC. With regard to the incursion into Ecuadorian territory, Presi-dent Uribe has repeatedly asserted that these govern-ments were complicit with the guerrilla organisation and that they were reluctant to cooperate with the fight to free Colombia. Since then, this accusation has been the principal obstacle to the normalisation of relations with neighbouring countries. To fully elucidate this matter is of great importance, especially in the case of the Ven-ezuelan administration, which represents an extremely sensitive issue for the vast majority of Colombians. What is clear is that the situation is so difficult that every dec-laration Hugo Chavez makes against Colombia generates greater national backing for President Uribe.


The military agreement with Colombia: exacerbating regional conflict

Against this backdrop, how can the military agreement with Colombia promoted by the Obama government be explained? Firstly, the aforementioned military-industrial complex is a key pillar in the economic strengthening of the United States and this is even more the case in the times of pronounced economic crisis. Historically, when a country turns to Keynesian policies in order to escape a crisis, their application has focused on military spending and the current situation is no exception. The military industry and military spending are fundamental to the economic recovery of the United States and President Obama has bowed quickly to this pressure.

Secondly, the agreement for greater military coopera-tion with Colombia allows Washington to continue con-trolling the region, especially the Andean countries. In this sense, it seeks to continue strategies such as Plan Colombia. Control over the natural resources of Amazo-nia and of the oil of the region is also fundamental, and it is for this reason that the anxieties of neighbouring countries, especially Venezuela, Ecuador and Brazil, are justified.

Lastly, although of no less importance, is the issue of global geopolitics. With its presence in Colombia, Wash-ington seeks to introduce a wedge between the countries of UNASUR and China, Russia and Iran. Brazil and China have a strategic alliance going back 20 years, and the Asian country is now the principal commercial partner of Brazil. Additionally, in response to the announcement of the military bases in Colombia, various countries of the region – such as Venezuela, Chile and Brazil – have sought to increase their military strength. It is clear that the con-tent and reach of this agreement remain a mystery.

By way of conclusion

Barack Obama’s triumph in the 2008 presidential elec-tions represented an undoubtable shift in international relations, in that the fascist leanings of the previous administration were brought to an end. From there, ex-pectations grew wildly. However, with respect to Latin America and the Andean region, his government has continued the security strategies first put in motion by Bush. Therefore, despite the important differences be-

tween the current regimes in Colombia and the US, there has been an understanding that the Northern country’s projects in the region will be continued. The agreement on deepening military cooperation between the two countries should be understood within this framework.

The new governments of the region have been ex-ploring alternatives for national development, based on principles and policies that bring about substantial im-provements in the living and working conditions of the general population. In general terms, Latin American countries demand respect for national sovereignty and a relationship with the United States based on respect and national self-determination. The voice of their lead-erships and their peoples are heard evermore loudy and clearly in the international arena. They are building a model of political integration and security, embodied in UNASUR, which represents an alternative to the strate-gies of the United States in the region.

In this regional framework, the democratic and civil society sectors in Colombia, which are clearly differenti-ated from the armed groups of all types and origin, must concentrate their efforts in integrating themselves into this new current being imposed in the region. In order to achieve this, it will be necessary to build a coalition among these sectors which allows the long night to be overcome once and for all, and to begin the building of a fairer country.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b l i“Acercar su petróleo a China y alejarlo de EE.UU., • el nuevo juego político de Chávez” (“Move his pe-troleum closer to China and further from the US – Chavez’s new politcal game”), in The Wall Street Journal Americas, El Tiempo, Bogotá DC, May 2007, p.1-8.

Ivekovic, Ivan, 2003. “Les États-Unis, l’ Irak et la • géopolitique du petrole” (“The United States, Iraq and the Geopolitics of Petroleum”), Alternatives Sud, Vol. 10, No.2.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b l iKkare, Michel.2001. “Resource Wars: The New Land-• scape of Global Conflict”, New York, Henry Holt and Company.

Mora, Vanegas, Carlos. 2009. “Relaciones comerciales • de Venezuela y los Estados Unidos” (“Commercial rela-tions between Venezuela and the United States”), See: www.abn.info.ve, August 2009.

Ragazzino, Guglielmo. 2003. “La industria del petróleo • y el mundo político republicano” (“The Oil Industry and the World of Republican Politics”), in Linda Bimbi (edi-tor), No en mi nombre. Guerra y derecho (Not in my name. War and law), Editorial Trotta, Madrid.

Internet pages consulted:

Centro de Estudios de Energía Solar (mayo 2009), • “Obama promueve energía solar para romper adic-ción EU petróleo”, (“Obama promotes solar energy in order to break US petrol addiction”), 29 May 2009, Centre for Studies on Solar Energy, www.censolar.edu

“EEUU sigue a la cabeza en gasto militar, seguido • de China” (“The US remains top of the list in mili-tary spending, followed by China”), 8 June 2009, See: http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/06/08/internacional/1244461495.html

“Obama anuncia medidas para reducir la dependen-• cia del petróleo” (“Obama announces measures to reduce oil dependency”), VIDEO-AGENCIA ATLAS, January 26, 2009, in www.elpais.com

See: http://ipsnoticias.net/nota.asp?idnews=91216 • (10 September 2009)

Lobe, Jim, “ESTADOS UNIDOS: Halcones urgen a • aumentar gasto militar” (“United States: Hawks call for raised military spending”) 2 July 2009. See: www.cubadebate.cu/categoria/autores/jim-lobe.

Petroamérica, in http://uniondelsur.menpet.gob.ve/• CES/siteCumbre/sitio/Union_Energetica/Petroameri-ca/Intro.html


Sistema financiero en Colombia 2004/2008

* Professor, National University. [email protected]

The bankers get rich while misery spreads Jorge Iván González

In the last six months the earnings of the banks was around $5 billion. This fact surprises many, as figures for production and employment show that the economy remains in crisis. According to the figures of the National Statistics Office (DANE), while in 2007 gross domestic product grew by 7.5%, in 2008 it only rose by 2.5%, and in the first trimester of 2009 it fell 0.6%. It seems strange that, at a time when production is falling and unem-ployment is rising, the banks show improved earnings. The banks’ balance sheets appear to contradict what is happening in the world of business. This reality is explained by the fact that the banks are still enjoying the speculative bonanza of the Colombian economy.

The Colombian economy is speculative in nature, and this has pre-vented the consolidation of a stable productive structure. Over the last 10 years the participation of industrial production in GDP has not risen. Additionally, the country has not strengthened its domestic market, and economic surplus has not been translated into more and better work.

There are two distinctive features to the speculative character of the economy. Firstly, the progressive distancing between financial/monetary movements and real activity. And secondly, a large part of the economic dynamic has depended on rises in the prices of primary materials (espe-cially coal and petrol)

Distancing between the financial/monetary world and the real world

In all of the world’s economies one can observe a progressive distanc-ing between the financial/monetary world and the real world. The reasons for this separation are diverse in nature. The international financial crisis demonstrated that the investment banks create bonds and papers without any backing in terms of real economic activity. Financial movements have taken on a considerable level of autonomy which has very little relation-ship with real transactions. In the United States the situation descended

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20 The bankers get rich while misery spreads 21Break the spell or more of the same?

into extremes of volatility and speculation the likes of which had not been seen since the 1930s. The crisis is explained, in part, by the weakness of regulation of in-vestment banks, which is considerably less stringent than that of commercial banks, Investment bankers are free to create almost any type of financial derivative which oc-curs to them. The solidity of these documents is reduced with every step they take away from the real world.

In Colombia, this separation between the financial/monetary world and reality has also taken place, but without reaching the extreme dimensions of the United States. There are three reasons to explain the difference with the US. First, the country had already gone through a mortgage crisis in the 1990s. Towards the end of the 1990s it became clear that rising interest rates and the growth of salaries were not compatible. The financial re-form carried out by then taxation minister Rudolf Hom-mes, at the beginning of the decade, did away with the distinction between the commercial banks and mortgage lenders. Competition for credit in an environment of high interest led to rises in interest rates that far exceeded growth in salaries. The crisis emerged when debtors could not pay for their homes. Second, as a result of the crisis in the late 1990s, banking regulation was made stricter. And third, investment banks have relatively little weight, The financial sector in Colombia is fairly orthodox when compared to that of the United States. This conserva-tive attitude helped prevent the crisis from taking on the proportions of those in the US.

The speculative logic of the Colombian economy has been fuelled by the government via internal debt. In March 2009, the capital balance of the TES1 (gov-

1 Public debt deeds issued by the General Treasury of the Nation (in pesos, in “Units of Constant Real Value” [UVRs], or in pesos linked to exchange rates) which are auctioned by the Bank of the Republic. They are one of the government’s most important sources of income. They are deeds issued to order, freely negotiable on the second-ary market. The duration of their validity is determined ac-cording to the necessities of monetary market regulation and the budgetary requirements of the treasury, fluctuat-ing between one and 10 years. Returns are determined by the national government according to market rates on the day of their issuance (SERFINCO).

ernment debt bonds) was $109 billion. The holders of internal debt are classified into three groups: The finan-cial sector holds $59 billion (pension funds account for $26 billion and banks $21 billion), equivalent to 54.7% of internal debt. The private sector accounts for $34 billion, that is to say 31.6%, and is made up of private individuals who buy TES. The public sector, meanwhile, represents $15 billion, or 13.6% (Banco de la Republica, 2009). Public entities also buy TES, sometimes because the government obliges them to, and sometimes because treasurers consider this form of investment to be advis-able. It can be argued, for example, that the Solidarity and Guarantee Fund (FOSYGA) should buy TES instead of paying hospitals, or that the Colombian Petroleum Firm (ECOPETROL) suspend exploration in order to buy TES, or that the National University acquire $5 billion in TES rather than incentivising research. The former Comptrol-ler of the Republic, Antonio Hernández, insisted that it was inappropriate for such bodies to neglect their mis-sions in order to plough resources into TES.

In accordance with previous figures, it is clear that the majority of resources received by the government from debt come from the financial sector. The banks and financial entities are the principal holders of TES. This option has various advantages for the banks because the risk is small and the profitability of TES is higher than other alternatives (banks receive, solely from interest on TES, about $2 billion a year). The fact that the financial sector lends to the governments reduces the amount of credit available to private applicants (families and busi-nesses). This behaviour on the part of the banks is not appropriate for the economy as a whole for two reasons. Firstly, because the government is not using the re-sources facilitated by public debt to finance investment projects, but instead to simply recycle public debt. And secondly, because credit becomes scarce and the private sector finds itself having difficulty in attaining credit from the banks. For the banks it is preferable to lend to the government (low risk and high profitability) instead of private individuals (families and firms – higher risk and lower profitability).

The new debt taken on by the government through the TES is, in large part, destined for paying interest on old debts. The situation of the Colombian economy would be very different if the internal public debt was aimed,

for example, at the development of large infrastructural projects. Frequently the government acts with the same logic as the banker Ponzi - it gets into debt in order to pay old debts. The current speculative cycle is perverse and is not favorable to production and employment. It suits the banks because the profits offered by TES are elevated. In a speculative context such as that of the Colombian economy, this result is perfectly compatible with a deterioration in production and employment. The logic of the speculator runs in contradiction to the world of business. It is not strange, then, that unemployment worsens while the banks get rich. Furthermore, it must be taken into account that the earnings of the banks have grown at a rate considerably higher than other sectors of the economy.

The incompatibility which we find between the posi-tive results of the banks, and the problems in the areas of employment and production, are hardly transitory. The solidity of the banks crumbles when families and busi-nesses cannot pay. The crisis at the end of the 1990s was clear in this regard. As previously explained, interest rates went up faster than salaries and, as a result, households could not pay their debts, The portfolio of the mortgage sector was the worst hit (in 2002 the portfolio in arrears reached 22.1%). The banks are now in relatively good shape, although the rate of arrears has deteriorated since mid-2007. Nonetheless, if the economy does not reacti-vate, the balance for the banks will not be so positive.

Asides from the reasons already explored, the bank-ing sector has also improved its earnings because it is very concentrated. After the financial reform undertaken at the beginning of the 1990s, the sector became more competitive. Five large banks (Bancolombia, Banco de Bogotá, Davivienda, Bilbao Vizcaya and Banco de Occi-dente) account for 60% of deposits. It is not surprising, then, that in an environment that is so favourable to con-centration and monopolies, net interest income remains high (8.5%).

The speculative wave has been fuelling hikes in the prices of primary materials. In the last two years, a false sensation of wealth has developed, despite the lack of structural conditions that favour the consolidation of industry, agricultural production and, in general, invest-ment and employment.

Rising prices of raw materials

Asides from their direct impact on GDP, higher petrol prices have also had an indirect effect which is expressed in increased exports to Venezuela. The high prices of oil and coal have a contextual impact on the economy. This type of bonanza, which has its origin in extractive activi-ties, does not generate a virtuous endogenous dynamic.

It is very difficult to sew the seeds of prosperity and, in order to achieve this end, economic policy must adopt the appropriate measures. Colombia did not take advan-tage of the years of prosperity and it failed to consolidate industry or generate virtuous cycles of investment-employment and consumption. When prices fell, the economy began de decelerate. Industrial and agricultural systems have been hit. The conversion on the best lands to livestock usage has gone hand-in-hand with growth in the imports of basic foods. The rate of unemployment continues to rise.

The clearest sign that the country has not assimi-lated this prosperity can be observed in the figures for poverty and misery (figures 1 and 2). These data, which have just been delivered by la Misión para el Empalme de las Series de Empleo, Pobreza y Desigualdad (Mesep) are worrying. It is not possible to herald victory, as the government has done, when the poverty level stands at 46% (figure 1). This means that 20 million Colombians are living below the poverty line. The country remains caught in the poverty trap.

The situation is more worrying still when one consid-ers trends in misery (the poorest of the poor). Between 2005 and 2008 misery rose from 15.7% to 17.8% (figure 2). The situation came about despite the fact that GDP rose in 2007. It is unacceptable that the highest levels of misery arise in a period of solid performance in GDP. In other words, growth alone is not enough to improve the living conditions of the poorest. Mesep’s results also demonstrate the growth of the rural-urban breach.

Higher rates of misery represent the clearest sign of the failure of the agrarian policy. The misery levels are ex-plained by rises in food prices (in 2007 inflation of food prices was responsible for 74% of total inflation), and this manifests in a more elevated poverty line. But going further, the high prices of foods are also an expression

22 The bankers get rich while misery spreads 23Break the spell or more of the same?

Source: Misión para el Empalme de las Series de Empleo, Pobreza y Desigualdad (Mesep, 2009)

of a dreadful agricultural policy. The country renounced food security and that has placed us in a very vulnerable situation, given the fluctuations in international prices.

Moreover, it must be taken into account that mis-ery levels have gone up at the national level despite the fact they have fallen in cities like Bogotá and Medellín. Up to a certain point, the policies of local government in the major cities have created favorable conditions for breaking out of the poverty trap. It is now the moment to abandon the individual focus and make way for a spatial focus which would allow improved performance and ex-ternalities to feed a virtuous cycle of development. The holistic attention to neighbourhoods, in the case of the cities, and determined areas of the countryside, allows for better use of resources and the creation of endog-enous dynamics which are sustainable.

dynamise the internal market. By following this path, we could reduce the space for speculation, and create bet-ter conditions for the strengthening of real activity. The best ways forward favour the domestic market and create virtuous processes of growth.

Conclusion

The distance between the monetary and real worlds fa-vours speculation. The finance sector has increased its earnings while production and employment have fallen, Colombia remains caught in the poverty trap. But this process has intrinsic limits because the breach cannot continue to wide indefinitely. Economic policy should favour investment and job creation. The government has concerned itself more with distributing subsidies – through programmes like Families in Action – than with the search for mechanisms to boost job creation.

To reduce the breach between the monetary and real sectors requires a simple formula: it involves creating in-stitutional conditions such that the enormous savings of Colombian society (in the hands of the banks, pension funds, ISAs, for example) can be used to finance large in-frastructural and urban renewal projects. Thus far, there has been a lack of long-term vision. Asides from generat-ing jobs, the consolidation of infrastructure would help

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b l iBanco De La Republica (2009), “Estadísticas sobre • Deuda Pública” (“Public Debt Statistics”), Banco de la República, Bogotá.

Serfinco (Stock brokers), “Renta Fija”, available at: • http://www.serfinco.com/products/rent/tes.asp

Source: Misión para el Empalme de las Series de Empleo, Pobreza y Desigualdad (Mesep, 2009)


In times of crisis, the bank doesn’t serveJuan Diego Restrepo E

Circumstances forced Jorge Hernán and Virgilio to seek a solution to their problems through the “informal” finance system. The former, a prestigious businessman who dedicated himself to exports, found himself obliged to pay a visit to a “loans office” to resolve a cashflow problem brought on by the fall of the dollar in mid-2008. The latter, a security guard at the residential unit where the former lives, didn’t have any option but to turn to the loansharks in order to pay his bills and avoid his public utilities being cut off.

These two men know only too well that, in times of crisis, the banks won’t help - either the guarantees required to back up their loans are far beyond their capacities, or else the sums they require are so small that there are no mechanisms to facilitate them.

“The overdrafts were at their limit, there was no money in the bank and we had to pay salaries, social security and our suppliers,” the impresario tells me. The banks where he kept his accounts re-fused to grant him a loan of 200 million pesos, as the sector in which he was involved is hit hard every time the value of the dollar falls. In June of 2008, the value of the currency was under 1,700 pesos and this exchange rate was insufficient to sustain his business.

“The first thing I did was meet with my partners and explain the problem in the hope that we could find a solution between us”, he continues. Three years beforehand, in the midst of a market crisis, each of the partners had given backing to a small loan using their own capital to facilitate things, but on this occasion a similar so-

lution was not possible as, amongst other issues, they refused. They did not want to continue affecting their own accounts. Then one of the partners suggested a possible solution: “I know someone who will loan us the money – and its clean money”. Given the circumstances, and having heard the explanations, they had little choice but to ac-cept. It would be 200 million pesos, at 2.5% a month for three months. “By way of credit reference, the moneylender asked only for the ac-ceptance of the partners, well-known and solvent businessmen in both Antioquia and Colombia,” adds Jorge Hernán. These kinds of loans, in certain social circles, are only made to those people who have among their partners people with a “good name” and “unquestionable social reputation”. These criteria are the letter of guarantee, and more than any material collateral could offer.

Virgilio likewise found himself facing an economic problem: albeit of a different proportion: he had no way to pay the 300,000 pesos he owed for two months of public utilities. His minimum wage, adjusted a little thanks to overtime, was not enough to cover the bills of his home. “What did I do? I told my wife to find one of the guys in the neighbour-hood who loaned money and have a talk with him. That money comes in cash. The only thing he asks is that you pay promptly every day”.

The conditions of this kind of loan, which is known in the neighbour-hoods of various cities as the “pagadiario” (“pay-daily”) or “gota a gota” (“drop by drop”) are onerous. The debtor must make payment every day, with interest. “They loaned me 300,000 pesos for three months at 20%”, admits Virgilio. In total, I would pay 360,000 in daily quotas of 4,000 pesos. Fortunately, this security guard had good luck. The manager of the residential unit where he worked learned of the situation and gave him the money to pay back his debt in one go. “‘We’ll see how you pay me afterwards’”, he tells me his boss told him.

Jorge Hernán and his partners were not so fortunate, however. The effects of the exchange crisis were prolonged and continued for much of the second semester of 2008. As a result, when the initial term of three months ran out, they did not have the money to pay off the loan in its entirety “and as the moneylender did not accept partial payments, we had to prolong the payment period for three more months”.

When this second term came to an end, the market did not allow the business to gather enough funds together to pay off the debt. At

* Journalist / Press Officer, The Popular Training Institute (IPC), Medellín.

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In times of crisis, the bank doesn’t serve26 27¿Continuidad o desembrujo?

that point, they requested another three-month extension, which was agreed by the moneylender, but not without adding an onerous new condition – raising the monthly interest rate to 3%. The loan was finally paid in March of 2009. In total, they paid 48 million pesos in interest. “We had no other way out”, affirms Jorge Hernán, adding that the blame for the whole debacle lies at the feet of a financial system “which is de-signed to close up almost automatically in times of crisis”.

But it is not just the export sector that accedes to this type of in-formal credit system. Jorge Hernán tells me that many businesspeople, from a diversity of different sectors – manufacturing, construction, transport – turn to these types of loans. “Managers and partners, faced with the need to avoid bankruptcy and letting down their employees and suppliers, not to mention sullying their good name, go in search of money by whatever means they can.”

And it is just this desperation that feeds the “informal” financial sys-tem. It should also be remembered that this system is not made up only of wealthy businessmen, who have found a niche thanks to commercial activities which allow them enough cash to offer loans with profitable interest rates, but also of an emergent nouveau riche, many of whom have generated their wealth from the drug trade.

Those who know this world of “financial informality” will say it is a stratified sector: large and well-known businesses, which count social, political and economic personalities among their partners, seek money that is recognised as “clean”, meaning that it has not been generated by illicit activity; medium-sized businesses, whose owners are not rec-ognised enough to use their name as a guarantee, are obliged to borrow money without taking account of its origin which, generally, comes from drug trafficking in which paramilitaries are often involved; and finally, the average citizen, who must accede to neighbourhood loansharks who make their money from extortion, the sale of hallucinogens and other illegal activities.

Another of the new modalities is the internet, where solutions are offered “instantly, easily, rapidly and safely”, as declared by a firm which says it is based in Bucaramanga. According to the offer, “we supply money instantly, easily, quickly and safely”, taking the payments from your credit cart, or by “libranza” (where payment is taken directly from salary, thereby negating the possibility of non-payment) or by “paga-diario” (daily payment).

The seriousness of the situation is recognised at the national level. At the inauguration of the III National Forum of Small Businesses, held in Santa Marta in May 2008, the mayor of the city, Juan Pablo Díazgrana-dos Pinedo, affirmed that one of the issues that was constraining the competitiveness of small business was the “moral and economic en-slavement to systems of pagadiario”.

The Mayor of Medellín Alonso Salazar Jaramillo recognised at the inauguration of the IV Latin American Forum of the Communal Bank, staged in his city in August 2009, that the “pagadiario” or “gota a gota” was a finance mechanism “used by groups on the margins of the law and by people who abuse the needs of the poorest, loaning them mon-ey and demanding high rates of interest”.

In the capital of Antioquia, where this system has become the main tool used by mid- and lower strata to attend to their most pressing needs - including payment for basic services, rent, stock for shops, sup-plies and even pension and university fees – a microcredit programme has been established to counter the informal model. Initially 22 artisans benefitted, receiving credits of 200,000 pesos each for nine days with an interest rate of 0.91% - meaning that they paid 1,820 pesos in interest.

The aim was to deactivate the phenomenon of the “informal” fi-nancial system, the size of which remains a mystery. “In this system there are people of every kind and a lot of money which, on occasion, comes with interest of up to 40%, depending on the sum and the level of need,” explains a researcher from the Technical Investigations De-partment (CTI) of the Attorney General’s office, who is concerned not only about the origins of the resources and the levels of usury, but also the consequences provoked by non-payment.

In reality, the communities that turn to this system generally know how serious things can become when a debtor is late with payment. They have identified practices that range from constant intimidation to the confiscation of domestic appliances, eviction, the appropriation of properties and even murder.

Octavio, a young professional who wanted to start his own business, knows of these practices only too well. As he did not have the backing or guarantees required by the banks for a loan of 25 million pesos, he decided, at the recommendation of a family-member, to use the ser-vices of a moneylender in the city of Envigado.

In times of crisis, the bank doesn’t serve28 29Break the spell or more of the same?

“I borrowed that money to start a business and I was late with sev-eral payments,” explains the young man. The moneylender then de-cided to “sell” the debt to a group of men who, according to him, were working with the so-called “Office of Envigado”, a recognised hoodlum organisation in Antioquia. “They visited me and gave me eight days to pay the debt. After eight days they came back and I paid them half of the debt. They gave me another eight days to pay it off, and, when I couldn’t get the money, they went to my house and took all the appli-ances. They warned me that they would be back and that I had to pay, and that if I didn’t… they showed me their guns”. Octavio was left with no option but to flee from the area, as he had no way of getting the money he owed.

On other occasions, adds the CTI researcher, it is the moneylender who gets killed, “freeing many of their debtors from any debt”. Experts that were consulted on the issue, who asked not to be identified, say that this informal financial system is not illegal so long as the interest charged does no exceed the annual rate set by the banking sector. “It is illegal when the moneylender abuses the interest,” they clarify. They also point out another key issue: “there is no authority controlling it”. This is where the greatest weakness is found, as it allows for money of “doubtful origin” to make its way into the system.

“The banks cover themselves” says Jorge Hernán. “These days they think more in terms of fiscal profitability than in social concerns,” he adds, and to support his assessment he makes reference to the earn-ings they make, which in 2008 reached 4.9 billion pesos. “They are the only ones that win in a crisis”, says the exporter.

Virgilio, meanwhile, has little belief that the banks help the poorest, “those of us who live on minimum wage”. He does not have properties to mortgage or friends or relatives who might guarantee a loan. “So what can I do? Look for money, when it’s needed, wherever I can”.

In that search, he is joined by hundreds of Colombian businessper-sons, who in times of crisis, when their accounts are overdrawn and their sources of income have dried up, and the banks refuse to give them fresh resources, don’t have any other option but to turn to the informal sector for the resources they need to meet their obligations.

“Financial solidarity does not exist,” concludes Jorge Hernán. “For those who have capital, wherever they come from, legal or illegal, the only thing that exists is business. It’s that simple.”

* Note: Both the names of the interviewees and the businesses were changed and/or omitted at the request of the participants.


The regression of a country Camilo Castellanos

Neither state of opinion, nor rule of law: a state of loyalty Alejandro Mantilla Quijano

Between a gang of thieves and their subjects: ethical questions in the era of “democratic security”

Carlos E. Angarita S.

“They have money and they want more”: Uribe’s brothers and the land of Mosquera (Chronicle)

Sandra Yanneth García Herrera

33

45

59

68

“Well, the anti-Uribistas are turning out to be right….

but the Uribistas are winding up with all the money”

INDEX


* Director, Education and Development Foun-dation (Fedes).

The regression of a countryCamilo Castellanos*

From the social and political conditions that brought Colombia to a change of regime, and from what this implies in terms of the determina-tion to bring about a dignified life for the entire population, while also achieving an independent and sovereign country.

It was more than a change of government. On 7 August 2002, the people of Colombia began life under a new regime. It wasn’t exactly a revolu-tionary regime emerging from the smoke clouds left by the mortars Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia launched at the Casa de Nariño (the Presidential Palace). Nor did it spring from some form of higher intelligence. Despite the enthusiastic affirmations emanating from their chambers, the two Uribe administrations have not implied the con-secration of any concept of a state.1 The confluence of tendencies born two decades before, which have now reached their climax, together with a style of governance molded by those same forces, formed a framework of political relations and a range of practices that now make up the current regime. This article is an attempt to understand the dynamic of this same regime – which is the father of “uribismo” – the forces that determine its character, and perhaps its raison d’etre, in order to see beyond the per-sonality of the president and the hate and fervor that sustains him.

By following the chronological sequence it aims to show the changes in the political regime and their implications, in such as way as to over-come views without context, without antecedents or projections, which are barely considered thanks to the avalanche of events which have come one after another.

1 The analysts failed in distinct efforts to give content to the “Communitary State”. Neither the president nor the idealogogues who composed his speeches gave any meaning to this flatus vocis. The institutional reforms ran out of steam amidst short-term electoral maneauvering and the limited reach of staying in power. Beyond the ephemeral merging of ministerial portfolios, and the routine community councils, new institutions did not emerge.

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3434 The regression of a country 35Break the spell or more of the same? 35

The last few decades in Colombia can be seen as a bitter dispute between longed-for democratisation, tak-en as an antidote to violence, and the obstinate opposi-tion of minorities anchored in privilege which block the way at any price. The government of Belisario Betancur in its finest moment, and the 1991 Constitution, both set out from a common premise: behind the perversion of violence there are objective causes, these being the social and political relations that prevent the majority of the population from acceding to a life of human dignity and the rights that make this possible. Said in another way, the war does not stem from the bad character of the commandantes and their troops. Therefore, achiev-ing peace means embarking on a process of dialogue and negotiation while also transforming the relations that suppurate violence, exclusion and death.

One can say, then, that from this perspective peace is associated with the democratisation of society and the state. It was the efforts of the 1980s that brought about decentralisation and the popular election of mayors, and a process of dialogue, which sank in the delusion of a revolutionary situation, and a drastic remedy which did not consider any ethical or political limits.

Against this backdrop came the rise of the Patriotic Union (UP) – a party born of the FARC-State negotiations – which in the elections of 25 May 1986 elected five sen-ators, nine representatives, 14 ministers, 351 councillors and 23 mayors. These results were still being celebrated when, on 30 August, Leonardo Posada, Representative to the Chamber for Santander, was murdered. This event marked the beginning of a period which shows no sign of reaching a conclusion, and which has come to be known as the dirty war.

This was the beginning of the genocide of the Patri-otic Union. Remember Senator Héctor Polanía, from the department of Huila, and the ex-minister Douglas Bot-ero Boshell, leaders of the anti-peace policy sentiment. The peace policy had barely got underway, but it was al-ready being portrayed as a surrender to communism. In this same period the paramilitaries, who have become so central to Colombia’s political life, took their first steps. They are a recurrent feature of our history who have their most immediate antecedents in the crooks of la Violencia in the 1950s, and who are reedited without imagination whenever circumstances call for it. This time

there are some new ingredients: the drug traffickers used anti-communist anger as a means to enter respectable society - better said the large landowners who, asides from seeking protection for their properties, said they were tired of the vaccines offered for the guerillas and politicos, but who may have feared the current in favour of democracy, which was growing stronger in the coun-try, more. (Gibson 2006: 204-206). Puerto Boyacá is the paradigm and primordial case in this regard.

The paramilitary groups of this first period were pa-tronised by gangsters and were at their service. “El Mexi-cano” was not a commandante, and neither was Pablo Escobar. The paramilitary groups of the 1980s were an instrument of military structures which assigned them dirty tasks and made them part of their strategy, but they did not constitute a national actor. There were men-tors who gave them training officers, weapons and even recognition. It is worth reading the list of persons who made up the editorial committee of Puerto Rojo (Red Port), the newspaper which was distributed by this en-terprise in Puerto Boyacá, to find illustrious ministers and distinguished figures from the world of national politics, although more in the logic of the furtive lover of whom Carlos Castaño spoke years later. At that time, the constitution of the National Restoration Movement (Morena), blunted the possibility of converting terror into votes and political power. The economy that grew out of this process combined transnational business (Texas Petroleum Co), the farmers and other landholders, grouped together in the Campesino Association of Live-stock Farmers and Agriculturalists of Magdalena Medio (Acdegam), and the drug traffickers in need of territories for the production and processing of drugs, along with military officials hoping to become landlords. The results are well-known: forced displacement of campesinos, en-largement of landholdings and the widespread dominion of the darkest political forces. This is the model which has been exported from Magdalena Medio to Urabá, and from there to the rest of the country, sewing the seeds of grief and coca (Medina Gallego 1990).

Perhaps the Barco government presented the cru-cial moment of the confrontation. In the face of the convergence of the insurgent formations in the Simon Bolivar Guerrilla Coordinating Committee (CGSB), the centralisation of organisations in the Unitary Central of

Workers (CUT), the National Coordinating Committee of Civic Movements, and other similar bodies, along with the boom of social actors such as the Northwestern Marchers, there was a response in the form of widening use of paramilitaries, massacres and targeted assassina-tions. Simultaneously, the drug traffickers made a play for political influence by dominating the traditional po-litical parties, pressuring them to block extradition and forcing the permissiveness of the elites. President Barco preferred to scupper a constitutional reform approved by the Congress rather than satisfy the drug traffickers who had managed to get said reform to proscribe the extradi-tion of Colombians.

The rise of struggles for social justice, the impos-sibility of governing as in other times, thanks to para-military violence, the terrorism of the drug traffickers and the decomposition of the traditional parties, made the command structures of a significant part of the insur-gency read this situation as its opportunity and, hence, it opened itself to a peace process. From another angle, facing the evidence of a country on the verge of ingov-ernability, and in an audacious act of realism, the most lucid sector of the governing class made the National Constituent Assembly possible, following the logic of “desperate times call for desperate measures”.

The 1991 Constitution was a peace agreement which deepened the frustrated democratisation. It was an en-terprise which eluded one of the principal obstacles when traditional politicians did not want to play on this stage. Other sectors absent from the pact were Las Fu-erzas Armadas, which would not agree to their reform, and other insurgent formations who turned their backs on the process.

With regard to everything else, social reforms re-mained little more than promises, and if the text of the constitution aimed to clean up political life, the strength of clientelistic habits and authoritarianism remained un-affected in the regions. In the years that followed, the traditional parties began a systematic process of rebuild-ing while also demolishing, equally systematically, the regime of inability and incompatibility in order to create cleaner functioning in political life. In the same decade, paramilitaries acquired greater recognition in very differ-ent areas of national life. The government of César Ga-viria legitimated the existence of “special private security

and vigilance services”, which, during the government of Samper, became knows as Rural Security Cooperatives (Convivir). This was the instrument used by the paramili-taries to consolidate their position in Antioquia, during the government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, and in Córdoba. The greatest success was achieved in the region of Urabá (Semana.com 2007).

In the mid-1990s the insurgent forces reached the peak of their military capacity. They operated in numer-ous large contingents and struck heavy blows. Some foresaw a new phase in the war, while they also persisted with a discourse of dialogue and negotiation which held closer to the dictum that the winner was whoever man-aged to win the peace flag. Peace, as a result, was little more than a tactical factor in a strategic horizon. But the most significant happening was that the armed forces became absolutised, making the political a servant of the military. It is the kind of militarism that springs up when “success goes to the head” and the armed forces no lon-ger depend on popular support. Said another way, when politics is no longer necessary. But there is no action without reaction, and the next step for the paramilitar-ies was to constitute a national structure in April 1997. By persuasion or through coercion, all the forces of the para-state were brought together under the banner of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), which made the incapacity of the state forces the justification for their existence. In this period, paramilitary enterprise gained strength with the influx of officials under scrutiny for human rights violations and their links to paramilitar-ies, along with former guerrillas in the Urabá region who found in the AUC their shelter. (Romero 2004). Transna-tional and national businesses, along with landlords, like-wise took shelter under their protection and paid them handsomely for their services. The major media outlets became their voicebox. Thus an open coalition between the formal elements of the state and forces living on the margins of legality was welded together.

Don Antonio Machado once said that in conversa-tion gypsies lie but they do not deceive. In San Vicente del Caguán, the guerilla commanders enjoyed their luxu-ry SUVs, and the visits of national and international per-sonalities and leaders who agreed to the rite of meeting the insurgents face-to-face, who listened to them as the owners of the future and chatted to them in the equally


ritualistic peace dialogues. While all this was going on, the first preparatory steps for Plan Colombia were being taken. They were conversations among gypsies.

The reality is that San Vicente was not waited upon in order to start talks on Plan Colombia in Washington. The plan was not presented to the Colombian political parties, nor was it taken to the Colombian Congress – instead it was taken to US Congress where a programme to combat cocaine trafficking, that would not involve counter-insurgency strategies, was approved. The Plan would have to hit hard in the south of the country, start-ing in the department of Putumayo, and later extending to Caquetá, Guaviare and finally to all of Colombia.

Meanwhile, the AUC focussed their efforts on win-ning control of the north of the country. Mancuso’s men arrived to Catatumbo after passing through five other de-partments without anyone noticing, with the exception of the final leg of the journey, when they crossed the path of an uninformed official and told him the whole thing had been given the green light from above. In Magdalena Medio sectors of the campesino population were mobi-lised to prevent the mountainous region of San Lucas from being cleared, this time to create a zone where they could converse with the guerillas of the Ejercito de Lib-eración Nacional (ELN). In a series of massacres, they advanced, taking control of the María Mountains, la Si-erra Nevada, the entire department of Magdalena, and el Catatumbo. Their control of cities like Barrancabermeja, Ocaña, and Santa Marta became total. It was said that an eventual break-up of the country – the balance of this was the only topic of discourse in those days – would see the north going to the paramilitaries and the south to the insurgency.

It was a victory for the butchers. The loss of Urabá, Magdalena Medio and Catatumbo marked an abrupt halt to the march of the insurgency. Furthermore, it was the end of the expansive cycle and, if this did not mean a general defeat, it certainly limited the insurgents’ pos-sibilities for development.

Now the armed forces, undergoing a drastic process of restructuring, were endowed with equipment that as-sured than rapid response times and fast detection of opposition movements – thereby depriving their oppo-nents of the element of surprise. This went hand-in-hand

with a masterful manipulation of public opinion and a plan for infiltration over the medium-term. The security forces were thereby able to dedicate themselves to con-taining the insurgents to limited, although not always reduced, spaces.

These years also saw the expansion of the self-de-fence forces. This process was characterised by two key trends that would define the future of the paramilitaries. The first was the link to drug trafficking. At first the “nar-cos” were simply patrons, but they went on to become the owners, despite Carlos Castaño’s assurances that he had control of the organisation. Later, the AUC burst onto the scene, eventually becoming its principal source of finance. Moreover, known drug traffickers became paramilitary commanders, knowing that this status would shield them from extradition. The AUC then became a kind of franchise that assured control of a region (territo-ries, crops and all forms of business) for whomever was willing to pay.2 The AUC became an attractive business.

The second tendency concerns their positioning as a political actor, as the third actor called upon to take part in peace talks, along with the state and the insur-gency. For the high command of the paramilitaries this was of great strategic importance, as it made them the granters of pardons and amnesties, and allowed them to play a role in the peace negotiations. The experience also taught them how control over local administrations could win them very significant advantages, and even greater gains if they could influence the government of a department or, indeed, the nation itself. They thus agreed to create local formations with the armed support of regional blocs and thus further their interests using policies that didn’t involve the traditional parties of the new leaderships.

The first to propose transforming terror into votes, in this new phase, was Jorge 40, who ordered the political chief of the AUC in the department of Magdalena, Neyla Alfredian Soto, to organise a meeting of the region’s

2 Miguel Arroyave paid Vicente Castaño US $8 millon for the Centauros Bloc. The “Mejía Múnera” —also known as Mellizos— acquired a trained paramilitary force to work in Arauca, along with the right to use the AUC name and be known as “commandantes”, for US $2 million. (González 2007).

politicians. “Buses arrived from all the municipalities,” recalls a witness. Thousands came, as if to some sort of convention. In his main speech, Jorge 40 emphasised that campaigns were very expensive and that candidates should join forces under the umbrella of “La Provincia Unida”. As in a workshop, those present were entrusted to put together lists for the Council in each municipality and to choose by vote the candidate for the government in Magdalena.3 Their commitment was formalised in the Chivolo Pact on 28 September 2000.

Ten months later there was another similar meeting. This time the goal was to take up the “irrenouncable task of refounding the country, of signing a new social con-tract”: this was to become the Ralito Pact (23 June 2001). On this occasion there were governors, senators, Cham-ber representatives. Luis Jorge Garay and his team set out the parameters of this agreement with confidence: “[…] different private actors agree to influence in all lev-els of the state, by legal, paralegal and illegal means, in other that the interests of the state are aligned in ac-cordance with the groups represented by the signatories of the pact” (Garay s. f.). The paramilitaries - blood and terror as a means to political power – became the deter-mining factor in Colombian politics.

Claudia Lopez, in her systematic work on the para-military expansion and the political transformation of Antioquia (Lopez, 2007) illustrates how the military dy-namic grows out of terror and the emptying/repopulating of vast areas, through massacres and forced displace-ment, thereby taking control of rural and urban territo-ries which are wrested from the insurgents. This control works together with an economic enterprise which chang-es ownership of the land – in what has come to be known as agrarian counter-reform – widening the area dedicated to coca, financing the drug trafficking routes and intensi-fying concentration of agricultural land.

The counterinsurgency gave them legitimacy in the eyes of those sectors of society who feared the guerrillas or had been their victims, or simply had strong feelings, either political or ideological, in opposition to them. This factor of legitimation became more relevant in the con-text of the peace talks of San Vicente del Caguán, which

3 José Domingo Dávila Armenta was La Provincia Unida’s candidate for governor.

were denounced in some circles as a surrender to com-munism by a fainthearted government. Strictly speaking, it was more the fear that eventual agreements would put their untouchable privileges at risk. The links to drug trafficking gave them enormous resources with which to consolidate this project. It was on these two bases that the necessary political representation to transform the economic and social realities resulting from displace-ment into definitive facts was built. At the same time, they also demanded political solutions to the illegality of their conduct and conquests.

As previously explained, the strategy to build this representation was the constitution of alliances and lo-cal political formations - in practice the constitution of electoral districts – that would allow them control of the electorate and maximise results:

“The role of paramilitaries in their areas of greatest control consisted of reducing or eliminating the possible competi-tors, grouping the voting of various municipalities in favour of the chosen candidate, grouping the chosen into trusted parties, convincing or intimidating the population into giv-ing their vote to the chosen candidate, and in the case that all of the above was not sufficient, or simply to make sure not to miss the opportunity, ‘adjusting the electoral regis-ter’ to reflect the results desired. The ‘electoral success’ of the emerging forces is framed by a combination of some or all elements of this strategy” (López 2007: 228).

The trial by fire was the parliamentary election of 2002. In an interview with the Associated Press, Salva-tore Mancuso announced that he hoped to win 30% of the seats in parliament. It was significant that many of the lists standing on this occasion were patronised by the AUC: Furthermore, in vast areas of the country those candidates that were not to the liking of the paramili-taries were impeded from proselythising. With apparent surprise, Mancuso himself declared that the results had surpassed expectations and that they controlled 35% of the Congress. This was the prelude to Álvaro Uribe’s presidential election, a candidate for whom Carlos Castaño never hid his sympathy. “Álvaro Uribe is at heart the man closest to our philosophy,” he admitted. It was well-known that he was also his partner in the enterprise of displacement.4

4 In Puerto Berrío, in a political meeting at which the presi-


But that was not all. A state of hostile opinion to-wards the aborted peace process was also systemati-cally constructed. Various factors combined to give this maneuver success. The persistent anti-humanitarian be-haviour of the guerrillas, along with the use of displaced zones for rearguard actions, and a complete disregard for public opinion - the manipulation of which contin-ued without any attempt at hindrance - all played their part. The combination of these factors led public opin-ion to consider that, after all the concessions, a strong and intransigent hand was needed to win the peace. It was an acceptance of the old saying that it would only be possible to make peace with the guerillas once they were militarily defeated. Peace was understood as mean-ing unconditional surrender or capitulation. This was the option that triumphed with “uribismo”.

Liberals may imagine that at one time these forces acted with a certain sympathy and years later, without discretion, became the architects of their own debase-ment. The truth is that the old bipartisanism was bur-ied under an avalanche of smaller political groups which were promoted by the paramilitaries all over the coun-try. For the first time in the 20th century, dissidence tri-umphed over liberal officialdom, which went from being the principal party to a secondary one. The venerable Conservative Party, meanwhile, wound up dissolving in “uribismo”, which itself became the final executioner of his governments, with the consent of the national leader. The liberals’ participation in the victorious alliance was a contradiction in terms, given that Uribe’s triumph was akin to a return to the 1886 constitution, with the citi-zenry marginalised, crude confessionalism, the state of exception as the rule and the recourse to violence as the systematic method of government. The order that was in-stalled in 1886 was barely apparent: it did not ensure the integrity of the nation, nor did it serve to harmonise rela-tions among Colombians. Something similar happened with “uribismo” at the beginning of the 21st century.

Two facts characterise what would become of the Uribe governments. On 8 August 2002, in a diligent

dential candidate Álvaro Uribe Velez was present, the paramilitaries expressed that committed support. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clCQBTgYGdk

move, the new leaders went to Valleduput to launch the programme of informants, the vertebral column of the democratic security project. It was a tribute to those who played a definitive role in his ascent to the presidency. He would have at his disposal the public resources to pay for the collaboration of the counter-insurgency en-terprise, in a budgetary action without prior or posterior controls. At first information was paid for, but in a nec-essary evolution, prices were later placed on the heads of the enemies. In other words, the use of assassins be-came part of state practice.

The second fact came two months later. Don Berna, at the head of his men, and General Montoya, at the head of his, along with General Leonardo Gallego, the Chief of Police, acted in coordination through Operation Orión to take control of the 13th Commune in Medellín. This joint action was undertaken in the plain light of day. State forces delegated to the paramilitary leadership the cleansing of the commune.

With the 2003 elections, the tendencies that struc-tured the new political order were consolidated into the political landscape of Colombia The paramilitaries now controlled not only one third of the Congress, but also a quarter of the municipalities and nine departments. The sole aspirant to the governorship of Cesar was Hernando Molina, who won with a slogan that revealed much about the nature of this new project: “for Cesar to return to the way it was before”.

On 28 July 2004, Salvatore Mancuso, Iván Roberto Duque and Ramón Isaza joined the victors in the Colom-bian Congress, which stood to receive them as if they were their masters. This was the culmination of their story,

h t t p : / / w w w . y o u t u b e . c o m /watch?v=j1BdZmHhUxQ&NR=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUx642yfDMU&feature=related Mean-while Rafael García - ex-information chief of DAS – in declarations to the Attorney General affirmed that in the first presidential campaign Álvaro Uribe maintained al-liances with the paramilitaries of the Atlantic Coast. García maintained that there was fraud in Magdalena, Cesar, Córdoba and La Guajira, “garnering the candidate Uribe some 300,000 votes without which he would not have won the first round”. See: http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.aspx?idArt=93732

an image which condensed and embodied the qualitative change in the state and Colombian society. The saviours of the country arrived to collect: thanks to their efforts the possibility of half the republic falling to communism had been averted. Now things come at a different price. We do not have a state with extra-institutional resources to impose on its adversaries, but instead extra-institu-tional resources with a state for its interests and needs. It is the paramilitaries who give the orders.

This is precisely the change that Luis Jorge Garay and his team describe with the concept of a “coopted recon-figuration of the state”. To them it is “an advanced state of rent-seeking, opportunism, individualist-groupist in-strumentalism, and organised social corruption”(Garay s. f.: 49). It is a time in which the captors of the state act “in the most coordinated manner, as an organic entity in various socially determinant areas and with the most complete and comprehensive use of principal methods on action-intervention, both legitimate and illegitimate, legal and illegal” (p. 50). To this change in the subjects, there is an equal and corresponding change in the objec-tives of their action. It is no longer simply a case of seek-ing sustained economic benefits, but also that these be accompanied by political power, impunity and social le-gitimacy. To researchers that have followed the process, the coopted reconfiguration of the state not only “lega-lises” their actions, but also garners social legitimacy for them, in what amounts to the institutionalisation of the interests of the captor agents. The means to achieve this end is none other than “the systematic modification of the political regime and influence in the formation, modi-fication, interpretation and application of the rules of the game and public policies” (p. 57).

All this begs the question, what happened to the ghost of the coup d’etat, the obsessive nightmare of the Colombian left? The final move of the uniformed officers with implications for state structures came during the gov-ernment of Andrés Pastrana when the generals met in Mel-gar to grumble over their discontent with the peace policy. From then to now, they have eaten from the hand of the executive like obedient pets. After all, they have at their discretionary disposal a considerable slice of the public budget, thanks to the system of payment for rewards and information, they profit from the transfer of properties in

their areas of operation and enjoy impunity in many of their relations, along with the monotonous drone about heroes. Now their main worry is to clean up their image in order to avoid the penal implications of their “heroic” behaviours, whether they be in national or international courts. Some say they will not lose in the courtroom the war they won militarily. We no longer hear the sound of sabre-rattling, or traumatic movements in the barracks. The country has healed its fear of military coups.

It must be recognised that the government and the Congress tried to honour their commitments with their paramilitary sweethearts. A law was taken to Congress concerning measures, and it was to their liking. In a tactic befitting of Big Brother himself, a law of impunity became known as the Justice and Peace Law, which offered com-plete evasion of punishment. This is what becomes of psychiatry’s brilliant ideas when they are employed to legislate for the benefit of those they serve

The fact is that with any confession the paramilitar-ies obtained the benefits of this law, something that led to an extremely short period for investigators to estab-lish the validity of a confession while also restricting the intervention of the victims in the process. Moreover, it also established that the time the paramilitaries spent in-volved in the process of dialogue and negotiation would be considered part of the sentence and, lastly, postu-lated fallacious reparations for the crimes committed.

While the country debated the Justice and Peace Law, Congress argued over a constitutional reform to autho-rise presidential reelection, something that was expressly prohibited by the 1991 Constitution. If “uribismo” has put a price on life itself, there was no reason to think it was going to suffer a crisis of conscience at the pros-pect of buying Congress. In a close race, in which the government needed two more votes to pass the reform, ministers from his office offered incentives and new re-sponsibilities to Yidis Medina and Teodolindo Avendaño to win their favour. The former changed her vote, while the latter opted not to attend the session in which the reform was voted upon. They were sentenced by the Su-preme Court of Justice on bribery charges, while those who made the offers they could not resist continue to enjoy the cabal of impunity.


But if the Congress and the Executive found agree-ment on the Justice and Peace Law, the magistrates of the Constitutional Court were not part of the agreement. Despite declaring the constitutionality of this norm, they proposed modification that would change how things unfolded. The first and most definitive of these was the demand that the confession should be for all crimes committed, and that an unsatisfactory confession would lead to the benefits of the law being denied. This set the stage for the tsunami that would become known as la parapolítica.5 The paramilitaries, in their statements to the Attorney General, began revealing their links to the political class and the commitments the politicians had with the paramilitary enterprise.

In the 2006 parliamentary elections the story of 2002 was repeated, despite the fact that the “parapolitics” scandal was already underway.6 Even those persons whose links to the paramilitaries were at the centre of great public controversy stood again. What was new was the process of centralisation of the dispersed and impro-vised movements from four years beforehand. Now, six large groupings received the favour of the armed groups. The failure of Eleonora Pineda and Rocío Arias made some think that they had lost ground, but the reality was that those protected by the paramilitary project main-tained the same level, with 30-35% of the seats.

The voluntary statements of paramilitary command-ers and their subordinates became a hot potato for the government. One day the government took them to the high-security prison in Itagüí and the truth became a shield for the confessors. There was intense pressure

5 Months after the sentence in the Constitutional Court, on 14 March 2005, in a raid on a house in Santa Marta, the authorities had impounded the computer of Edgar Fierro, also known as “Don Antonio”, a confidante of “Jorge 40”, in which relationships between the paramilitaries and politicians of the Atlantic Coast were detailed.

6 “In 2006 a new panorama emerged. After a long journey from the demobilisation process, and when ‘his’ bloc had succeeded in getting the paramilitary bosses to speak in full at the Congress, and the Justice and Peace Law had been approved, a new set of elections arrived and the question was what course to follow.

from the highest spheres of government, along with the top branches of economic and political life. It was neces-sary to avert the risk of the truth getting out. For this rea-son the top ranks of the paramilitaries were extradited to the United States in the early hours of 13 May 2008.

Thanks to the concerted action of the Supreme Court of Justice, it has been possible to establish the size and penetration of the paramilitary presence in the Colombian Congress. One indicator of the seriousness of the issue is the manner in which Congress has refused to move forward with its own reform. It was the controversy concerning the “empty seat” that led parliamentarians to refuse to sanction themselves as individuals, much less as parties involved in collusion with illegal forces. Another manifestation of the same process was the in-terminable list of politicians under investigation for such relationships. Any member of Congress who lost their investiture was replaced by someone who, within weeks, was likewise being investigated for the same allegations. They were not just a few rotten apples, or errant behav-iours – the phenomenon was evidence of the change in the political regime.

Around the middle of the 19th century, Colombia experienced mass disentitlements. The assets of the Catholic Church – at the head of the congregations and the dioceses – were handed over to traders and those fa-voured by the government. Those in power renewed and strengthened their positions, but, worse still, the elites adopted the mentality and modalities of large landown-ers. A similar process is taking place today. The bloodied assets of the gangsters and paramilitaries, and the para-military gangsters, are becoming the property of “mem-bers of the court” who demand a place in the business

Investigators reveal that the debate provoked great tension among the self-defence forces. On one side, Mancuso, ‘Don Berna’, and ‘Jorge 40’ insisted that the path was al-ready clear to form their own national political movement and thereby participate directly in politics. On the other, ‘Ernesto Baez’, Carlos Mario Jiménez, alias ‘Macaco’, and Rodrigo Pérez Alzate, alias ‘Julián Bolívar’, insisted on maintaining their alliances with the politicians. The latter side won, and was adopted as the electoral strategy, prior to the later objective of pressurising negotiation with the national elites.”

world, using this status to avail themselves of the spoils of displacement, with repercussions similar to those of the 19th century disentitlement. The case of Carimagua7

is the best example.

It is possible that relations in the bosom of “uribis-mo” have broken down thanks to the extradition of their principal thugs. It must be noted, however, that the ad-verse reaction is not generalised. Almost all criticise the subordinate ranks, but the criticisms don’t included the chief. Some reproach for failure to meet commitments may barely be insinuated, but it does not go further than that. Perhaps what is really important is that paramilita-rism is still alive and kicking, with the same practices and effects as always. New gangs, or whatever denomination is attached to them, persist in terrorising the population, insisting on their particular form of territorial control, in the same structures with the military and police com-mands, and the same protagonism in drug trafficking. The paramilitary resource has proved to be an irrenoun-cable strategic tool which now forms an inherent part of the making of war.

The arc of forces formed by “uribismo” – which has been given that name inaccurately, as it was simply in the current president that it found its personification and cabalistic expression – has imprinted its ways and mo-dalities of functioning onto the political regime.8 In this, as in art, the form is not independent of the content, nor is it merely incidental. The Law has become a mere formality and it is now a useful implement, albeit barely decorative in nature, which serves as an alibi to make the illegal and illegitimate legal and legitimate. It is to this dynamic that the cynical aspiration to pass from a state

See: http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.aspx?IdArt=100953

7 In this regard, see, in the same book, the article by Juan Carlos Morales, “Lo rural y lo alimentario en el gobier-no Uribe· (“Rural and food issues in the Uribe govern-ment”).

8 In this publication, Alejandro Mantilla examines the issue in greater depth in his article: “Ni Estado de derecho, ni Estado de opinión: Estado de lealtad” (“Neither State of Opinion Nor Rule of Law: a State of Loyalty”).

of law to a state of opinion – another clever offering from the idealogogues in the shadows – alludes.

In the first decade of the new century, Colombia changed regressively. It is the conservative revolution which Chileans spoke of during Pinochet’s tenure. In the shadow of agrarian counter-reform the most retrograde elements of the elite strengthened themselves. The dark-est and most irascible currents took hold of public opin-ion. In the Presidential Palace, reciting the sacred rosary became an act of government once again. The country lost its sense of national dignity and resigned itself to be-coming an enslaved pawn to imperial aspirations for the control of the neighbourhood. The poor applaud their messiahs, they shout excitedly at the sentences and they savour the crumbs that fall from the feast of subsidies being enjoyed by those in power. The entire citizenry, as subjects of universal and fully understood rights, is now an illusion which the country once lived with fervor. Un-fortunately, these are the wages of five decades of armed confrontation which began as an effort to build a real democracy and become an independent and sovereign country. They are the unwanted results that planners sometimes speak of.

It is possible that the changes are neither episodic nor contextual. On the contrary, they seems to be con-solidating into a permanent situation, as if another so-ciety or state had been put in place. To say permanent does not mean immutable or eternal. But it must be rec-ognised with realism, and these facts thought about and acted upon in consequence. For example, the effort to take the Colombian state and society out of the situation which the current dominant bloc - a powerful alliance of legal, paralegal and illegal social, military and political forces - has forced it into, cannot be understood as a simple question of removing one person.

Curiously, the war and what we call “uribismo” are concominant phenomena. Without the war “uribismo” would not have been possible or necessary. And in order for “uribismo” to continue, it needs the war to persist. It is the war that has suppurated eviction and exclusion, and strengthened antidemocratic trends. For this reason, overcoming this gloomy period in our national history will require audaciousness and creativity in overcoming the armed conflict in which the country is languishing.


To attain a democratic society and state for Colom-bia implies stirring up the factors that have permitted the consolidation of exclusion and eviction as dominant practices, dissolving the political and social bloc that is utilising them, reconciling national opinion with the ide-als of equality, justice and solidarity and tearing down the institutional scaffolding erected to shelter corruption and impunity. There are reasons to believe that this re-gime is an ephemeral creation. There are already enough symptoms of its being out of date.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b l iGaray, Luis Jorge et al. (s. f.). “La reconfiguración • cooptada del Estado: más allá de la concepción tradicional de captura económica del Estado” (“The Coopted Reconfiguration of the State: Beyond the Traditional Conception of the Economic Capture of the State”) (mimeo).

Gibson, Edward (2006). “Autoritarismo subnacio-• nal: estrategias territoriales de control político en regímenes democráticos” (“Subnational Authoritari-anism: Territorial Strategies for Political Control in Democratic Regimes”), Desafíos Magazine, No. 14, Bogotá.

González, José Jairo (2007). “Los paramilitares y el • colapso estatal en Meta y Casanare” (“The Paramili-taries and State Collapse in Meta and Casanare”), in Parapolítica. Cerec and Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, Bogotá.

López, Claudia (2007). “La ruta de la expansión • paramilitar y la transformación política de Antio-quia, 1997 a 2007” (“The Route of Paramilitary Expansion and the Political Transformation of An-tioquia 1997 - 2007”), in Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, Parapolítica. Cerec and Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris, Bogotá.

Medina Gallego, Carlos (1990). Autodefensas, • paramilitares y narcotráfico en Colombia (Self-Defence Forces, Paramilitaries and Drug Trafficking in Colombia). Documentos Periodisticas Editorial, Bogotá.

Semana Magazine• (Digital version) (2007). “Con-vivir y paras: amor a primera vista” (“Coexistence and the Paras: Love at First Sight”). Available at: http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.aspx?idArt=102193

Romero, Mauricio (2004). “Democratización política • y contrarreforma paramilitar en Colombia” (“Political

Democratisation and Paramilitary Counterreform in Colombia), in Gonzalo Sánchez and Eric Lair (eds.), Violencias y estrategias colectivas en la región andi-na (Violence and Collective Strategies in the Andean Region). Norma (website), Bogotá.

Internet pages consulted:

http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.• aspx?IdArt=100953

http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.• aspx?idArt=93732

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUx642yfDMU&• feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clCQBTgYGd• k

http://www.youtube.com/• watch?v=j1BdZmHhUxQ&NR=1


* Researcher, Corporation for Political Culture Consciousness-Raising and the Contempo-rary Political Theory Research Group.

Neither state of opinion, nor rule of law: a state of loyalty Alejandro Mantilla Quijano*

Philosopher presidents (or how to distract opinion by talking about opinion)

On the evening of 27 May 2009, in a dinner staged for the Prince and Princess of Asturias, the host of the celebration affirmed: “I would say Colombia is in the higher phase of the rule of law, which is the state of opinion”. The speaker and designer of the phrase was not just anyone – he was the head of state who dared to launch a new category of political philosophy. In the history of humanity there are very few occasions in which statesmen become philosophers, or in which philosophers take control of the state. Did history deliver us a new Marco Aurelio? Were we before a successor to Boecio? Before the philosopher king Plato?

On 28 May, at the closing of an international seminar, the same head of state returned to the aforementioned point:

And we think that the characteristic elements of a modern democracy are: security, liberties, and social cohesion, the operation of a state with indepen-dent institutions, which in accordance with objective rules, have to cooper-ate harmoniously for the greater good of the nation and in which, of course, the grade of participation of public opinion, which is what characterises the higher level of the rule of law, which is the state of opinion, is a factor of transparency and confidence building.

Not even a day had passed before the “state of opinion” once again took hold of debate. Several months and many speeches had subtly passed by, but the same President was still talking about the same term, but without clarifying exactly what it meant. One judicious journalist1 dis-covered that the first time the term had been used by the statesman was when he declared at a publicity event: “in states of opinion, and I believe that the most important characteristic of the Colombian state is that it is a state of opinion – the most important control is opinion” (Colombian Congress of Publicity, 2008). So as not to leave any doubt, he used the same term three times in one sentence.

1 See the study by Laura Jaramillo Bernal at: http://www.lasillavacia.com/historia/2296

INDEX

4646 Neither state of opinion, nor rule of law: a state of loyalty 47Break the spell or more of the same? 47

From the publicity of higher intelligence (or how to say, “next question, my friend!”)

The first declaration about the state of opinion was made during a publicity congress. However, in contemporary societies the objects of commercial publicity are rarely aimed at strengthening the public. “Nothing seems so like the life of modern humanity as a publicity report from which all signs of the promoted product have been removed”, says Giorgio Agamben (2006: 54). Consumers seek from their screens to find that product that never kept its promise, like the deodorant that never attracted new partners even though the commercials promised it would. But when the promise being offered is democ-racy itself, the worry is much greater. Democracy involves advertising the public, not the kind of advertising that promotes merchandise.

Karly Kraus spoke of a situation where “facts pro-duce the news and the news is guilty of the facts”. Kraus’ aphorism fits the case of Colombia well – in recent years some journalists have opted to dramatise the news rath-er than simply present it, in the manner of baroque trag-edies where the object of the story is the theatre itself, and the dramas manage to strengthen the virtue of the spectators (Benjamin 2007: 264). In this way, our event-ful history, especially with regard to politics, is not sim-ply exposed on the screens, but is interpreted for the viewers. In this way, it is sought to make the theatrical interpretation coincide with the supposed correct moral interpretation of the facts.

Hannah Arendt has already emphasised the impor-tance of propaganda in totalitarian political regimes as a mechanism for affirming the infallibility of government action and achievement of its prophetic goals. In her words “… the presumption of infallibility is not based on superior intelligence so much as the correct interpreta-tion of the essential reliable forces existing in history…” (Arendt 2004: 433 y 434). Nonetheless, in Colombia the correct interpretations do not tend to promote these historic forces, but instead aim to defend the infallibility of a superior intelligence, a term which, perhaps not by coincidence, was used by José Obdulio Gaviria to refer to the head of state.

It is not by chance, then, that in recent years the President has openly stigmatised the work of journalists

like Hollman Morriss and Alejandro Santos, or that the columnist Claudia Lopez was fired from the newspaper El Tiempo for reflecting on the journalistic handling of a much talked-about governmental scandal. It is also symptom-atic that in recent times journalists are met with evasion when questions aimed at the head of state address the issue of his apparent infallibility. One well-known case involved a BBC journalist who was accused of misinter-preting the government. The head of state responded to a query as follows:

Don’t misinterpret the Colombian government. The Colom-bian government is very prudent. That is why I don’t like these kind of interviews, because you start asking ques-tions that don’t correspond to reality, simply creating confu-sion. (Miglierini 2009).

In this way, it is sought to make the news create the facts. On another occasion, when a journalist asked about the facts that create the news, the response was evasive:

Journalist: “Do you want to be President of Colombia for another four years?”Interviewee: “Next question my friend…. Where were you born?”Journalist: “I’m Argentine”Interviewee: “Well, study the history of your country and leave Colombian democracy in peace” (Semana.com 2009).2

In this sense, it is clear that the Latin American phe-nomenon of “telepresidency” is accentuated in Colom-bia as a mechanism for governmental propaganda. The presidency does not just govern before the cameras, but the cameras must filter out any hint of questioning of presidential power. Giorgio Agamben was right when he affirmed that, in current democracies, the tendency is to renounce freedom of thought and the separation of pow-ers in order to focus on the electoral majority machine and media control of opinion, these being the favourite instruments of totalitarian states (Agamben 2001: 69).

2 Texts taken from Semana.com on 4 May 2009. “¿Re-elección? Otra pregunta, amigo” (“Reelection? Next question my friend”), available at: http://www.semana.com/noticias-politica/reeleccion-otra-pregunta-amigo-uribe/123626.aspx

The state of opinion does not consist of the primacy of private points of view, but of a concept of opinion based on two complementary points: (1) the centrality of opinions close to those of a government that sees itself as infallible and; (2) the force of majorities calculated ac-cording to the dictate of surveys. Hannah Arendt said (2004: 389) “totalitarian movements depend on the pure force of the number”, in our case governmental infallibil-ity shields itself in the pure power of percentages faithful to the current leadership.

The question is not opinion, the question is loyalty reflected in the force of the number of people surveyed.

Intervening in the economy to ensure opinion (or individual gifts as an elixir for loyalty)

The rule of law takes as its foundation the primacy of the government of laws and institutions over the gov-ernment of individuals: this demand is a way to reign in the arbitrariness of those who have power (Bobbio 1997: 167 y ss). The state of opinion, at least for José Obdu-lio Gaviria, is defined as “a government in contact with the citizenry. Its principal tools are community councils and direct contact with the people through participation mechanisms” (El Tiempo (a) 2009).

The privileged stage of the government is the Com-munal Council, a space where public deliberation is re-placed by the begging of presidential favours, not unlike the Coppola movie where guests at the wedding of Vito Corleone’s daughter ask for the Godfather’s help. The logic of favours supplants the logic of institutions and, when this occurs, democracy is put at risk, as politicians seek to ensure fidelity to the government rather than to solve society’s problems.

To develop enough Communal Councils to meet all the favours asked for requires a great deal of money. This explains why recent management of the economy has been characterised by uncontrolled spending on the part of central government. Moreno and Junca have described the political economy of the government as an expan-sive fiscal policy based on a preponderance for central spending, in a tendency which they have called “military Keynesianism” (2007: 50 y ss). In my judgment, the hy-pothesis must go further, as it cannot be ignored that this expansive management of spending includes other

areas of the economy and is not limited to the military. We could even speak of a “Keynesianism of loyalty”, based on deficient public spending as a mechanism in the economy to ensure loyalty to the government. Five clear examples can be found in Acción Social (Social Ac-tion), the management of the System of Identification of Potential Benificiaries of Social Programmes (SISBEN), the construction of roads, agricultural policy and the taxation system.

Acción Social acts as a kind of superministry which concentrates important portions of spending and usurps functions from local governments. A central pillar of its actions is the delivery of subsidies, and this has two consequences: (1) It rules out the possibility of a univer-sal social policy based on rights, and (2) it reproduces the pattern of loyalty-based relations with government through the delivery of monetary support. These aid pro-grammes show a progressive growth: in the first admin-istration of the current leadership it went from 300,000 to 1.5 million beneficiary families (El País, 2009) while in the second administration it aims to reach 2.7 million families (Portfolio, 2008)

Thus, social policy in Colombia does not seek to guarantee the rights of the population but instead con-stitutes a good for political exchange to win votes and loyalties; from the unsuccessful universal policy we are delivered into a situation in which it is political support-ers who benefit. Another example of this tendency can be found in the management of cover by SISBEN, a pro-gramme that went from a subsidy regime for those who could not enter the health market as consumers (as de-manded by neoliberals through Law 100), to operating as a platform for negotiation and political transaction. Re-cently Senator Cecilia López denounced the current situ-ation in which, she said, at least five million people were receiving benefits from the subsidised regime despite the fact they did not suffer the levels of poverty required to belong to the regime (Semana.com 2009). In sum, we find a perverse cycle in which social policy is instrumentalised for the purchase of loyalty and thus becomes a factor in political exchange.

A similar tendency can be found in the management of infrastructure, especially in the construction of roads. While the construction of megaprojects such as the tun-


nel for the “Ruta del sol” (“Sun route”) never seem to advance, the remodelling of the El Dorado Airport suffers deplorable management, and the rail network remains in crisis, the Ministry of Transport has oriented itself to push ahead with Plan 2500, a programme with a cost of close to 2.3 billion pesos and which aims to pave 3,160 kilometers of municipal roads. Even though the paving of these roads was the responsibility of local governments, it is the central government which is developing this pro-gramme, choosing the beneficiary municipalities in pub-lic hearings (a type of mini-community council) in which it seems to give greater priority to political commitments than to national needs. (Semana magazine, 2009: 28). It is no coincidence that in 2004 the Conpes documents related to Plan 2500 excluded the technical requirement for engineering studies in order for projects to be imple-mented, and in its place included a clearly political cri-teria, according to which works would have to facilitate cooperation between national government and the com-munities. (Vélez Vieira 2009).

Agricultural policy is also based on an expansive fis-cal policy which aims to assure benefits for determined sectors rather than seeking to improve quality of life for rural people in general. The government’s agricultural policy has centered on the promotion of concrete sec-tors of production through direct subsidies and price stabilisation funds, which have benefitted the producers of biofuels, sugar, cocoa, meat and milk especially (El Ti-empo [b] 2009). In the first seven months of 2009 alone, support was delivered which included: price protection for coffee (150 billion pesos), credit interest subsidies for agricultural exporters (85 billion), technical assistance incentives (23.5 billion), credit interest subsidies for the fertilisation of coffee (20 billion), incentives for sewing of yellow corn (18 billion), forestry incentives (15 billion), subsidies for palm oil in the department of Nariño (10 bil-lion), incentives for the sewing of beans in the zona caf-etera (coffee zone) (5.2 billion), adding up to a total of 326.7 billion pesos. In contrast, the budget of the Colom-bian Institute for Rural Development (INCODER) for the purchase of lands for campesino families barely reached 20 billion pesos for the whole of 2009 (INCODER 2009).3

3 See Colombian Institute for Rural Development, Action Plan 2009, available at: www.incoder.gov.co

The Agro Ingreso Seguro scandal involved the grant-ing of non-refundable multi-million subsidies to financ-ers of the current president’s campaigns, along with beauty queens, senior civil servants, the frontman of a demobilised paramilitary leader and powerful families who divided up their lands in order to obtain greater resources (just two families in Magdalena received five billion pesos, Semana Magazine 2009: 38). And this situa-tion is barely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the injustice of the agrarian policy. In the last three years the large producers have received 320 billion in subsidies, in contrast to the small producers who have received 151 billion over the same period, while the displaced and re-inserted have been allotted eight billion since 2002.

Without doubt, the most evident example of this dy-namic can be found in the biofuel sector. The dispro-portionate rise in the budget for this sector explains, in large part, the deficient policy of the government. Public spending in this line has gone from 687 billion pesos to 5,900 billion, a jump of 858% in barely one year (Portfolio 2009). Additionally, the cost of ethanol rises with each job and thanks to governmental decisions, as is well ex-plained by Salomón Kalmanovitz:

Ethanol was costing us $6,076 per gallon in July 2008 when gasoline was costing $5,537. In December 2008. when the price per barrel of petroleum was US $54, etha-nol cost us even more, $7,500 per gallon, while the gov-ernment announced the first drop in the price of gasoline of $60. If we had imported Brazilian ethanol, it would have cost us $3,760 per gallon, bringing it to Barranquilla and including a tariff of 10%. This means we were paying dou-ble what it would have cost us to import alcohol produced efficiently in Brazil. (Kalmanovitz 2008).

In summary, it would be much cheaper for the na-tional economy to manage biofuel in a different way, but what we find is that the political economy is markedly inefficient and benefits friends of the government. The political economy is designed to benefit a few at the cost of excessive spending.

With regard to the taxation system, loyalty is man-aged in an even stricter fashion. Far from instituting a framework of taxes in which all natural or juridical per-sons are dealt with according to similar criteria, the Co-lombian taxation system is characterised by the practice of exemptions being made into the rule. For each sector

of production which is loyal to the government, an incen-tive mechanism is negotiated privately, and it is worth underlining that palm growers benefit just as much from tributary exemptions as they do agricultural policy sub-sidies, thereby fuelling the state of loyalty. The number of exemptions is so large that, in 2008 alone, a group of industrialists stopped paying 8,000 billion pesos in taxes. (Semana Magazine 2009: 38). Principal taxation and juridi-cal benefits in recent years

The expansive fiscal policy of excessive spending to buy loyalty has been strengthened by the form of the transfer regime, which has slowed down decentralisa-tion and reduced social spending. It is calculated that in 2006 alone, some 3,400 billion pesos in transfers to the regions dried up, implying a drastic reduction in spend-ing on health, education and basic sanitation (Rodríguez Salazar 2007: 142). For this reason the neoliberal formula of saving and fiscal discipline has disappeared under this government, giving way to a policy of excessive spending which has pushed the country into deficit. If neoliberal

governments avoid spending, this government spends a great deal on its friends and very little on those who do not show themselves to be allies. One unavoidable ex-ample is the Victims Law, which was scuppered because, according to the government, it represented too high a cost for the exchequer. The reality is that the law lost support not because it would cost too much in fiscal terms, but because it would cost a lot to give reparations to people who were not friends of the government.

Perhaps the exercise of loyalty is key to interpreting the four ideological pillars of the current government. In-vestor confidence is an incentive to reward the friends of the regime. Social cohesion, meanwhile, is how loyalty to the president manifests at the national level. Democratic security is not directed to protect society, but to protect the government, and for this reason the Administrative De-partment of Security (DAS) no longer pursues those who represent a threat to the state, instead pursuing as public enemies those who do not show loyalty. It is an application of theories that reduce politics to the logic of friend-enemy,

Tab le 1*

Economic stability contracts Law 963 of 2005 Large impresarios

The government signs “Juridical Stability Contracts” in which it commits to not changing the current rules of the game at the time of signing.

Hotel exemptionsLaw 788 of 2002

Decree 2755 of 30 September 2003

New and remodelled hotels

Income exempt from tax, those generated in hotel services in new and remodelled hotels

Exemptions: tax-free zones Law 1004 of 2005 40 companies

The main benefit received by those operating in a tax-free zone is a reduction on tax on income of between 33% and 15%. Also exempt are customs contributions, VAT and tariffs on imports and exports.

Palm famers exemptions Law 939 of 2004

Palm farmers registered by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development

Exemption for 10 years for liquid income generated for the exploitation of new late-developing crops in cocoa, caucho, palm oil, citrics and fruit.

Deductions on revenue from investments in real fixed assets for production

Law 863 of 2003All companies that make investments in real fixed assets for production

From 1 January 2004, natural and juridical persons contributing taxes on income can deduct 30% and from 1 January 2004 they can also deduct 40% of the value of investments made solely in real fixed production assets.

* Table composed by Camilo Castellanos and Robinson Leiton Barreto. The author offers his thanks for their guidance.


a thesis that was the foundation of German Nazism.4 And of course, we have the state of opinion of which we have been speaking. It seems then that opinion is indeed ex-tremely important, much more important than institutions, but that this opinion is shaped by gifts and subsidies, even though this implies the dismantling of the population’s rights. And it also seems that the opinion of major inves-tors subsidised by the government is fundamental.

The most crucial opinion is family opinion (or how to benefit a few in the name of social cohesion and investor confidence)

At first glance, the political and the public seem to be the very opposite of family-style relations. Hannah Arendt makes a key point: politics deals with the being together of people, it seeks to bring diverse peoples together; for this reason, the development of political bodies based on family relations leads to the ruination of politics:

“Families are founded as shelter and fortification in an in-hospitable and strange world in which one seeks to establish family relationships. This desire leads to the fundamental perversion of politics, because, through the introduction of such relationships we replace, or better said lose, the fundamental quality of plurality” (Arendt 1997: 46).

It is clear that family matters, but to adopt political behaviours that depend on family connections leads to the perversion of politics and the decline of democracy. This situation is more harmful when family links define both politics and easy enrichment. The case of Tomás and Jerónimo Uribe is instructive: the firm Ecoeficiencia, one of their businesses, provides environmental services such as recycling, water treatment and noise measurement.5

4 On the relationship between Schmitt’s political theory and the authoritarianism of the Uribe government, see: Man-tilla and Munera (2005).

5 See, in the same edition of the Federico Parra article: “Mercantilizar lo público: profundizar la exclusión y la po-breza. Un análisis de la política pública de manejo de re-siduos en el período de gobierno de Álvaro Uribe” (“Com-modifying the Public; Deepening Exclusion and Poverty. An Analysis of Waste Management During the Govern-ment of Álvaro Uribe”). And “Los hijos del Presidente” (“The President’s Sons”), in Semana Magazine (2008:

Ecoeficiencia enjoys unique privileges by the standards of any private businessperson - it enjoys not only perma-nent security from National Army troops, but it has also benefitted from a piece of legislation, Law 1259 of 2008, which establishes environmental hearings for infractions of hygiene, cleanliness and waste collection norms. In ac-cordance with this law, it is prohibited to “uncover and extract, partially or totally, without some authorisation, the content of bags and receptacles for rubbish once they have been left for collection”.6 In summary, the de-cree criminalises small-scale recyclers who have no other choice but to open bags for recoverable materials that can be resold at low prices. Without these small recyclers, Ecoeficiencia eliminates its principal competition and be-comes a prosperous company benefitting from a law that enlarges the income of the Uribe Moreno family.

Another well-known case concerns the Western Tax-free Zone, a project which received significant investment from the Uribe Moreno brothers, whose lands increased in value substantially thanks to the decisions of civil ser-vants involved in the Commission of Tax-Free Zones, all of whom are subordinates of the President. A while after the decision which valued the lands, the Uribe brothers sold part of the land for a price far below its commercial value to a group made up of family-members of the May-or of Mosquera, Cundinamarca, a civil servant involved in establishing the tax-free zone. The former mayor is currently a Conservative Party candidate for the Senate, and he received the clear backing of Tomás Uribe at the launch of his campaign (Coronell, 2009). Following criti-cisms concerning these issues, the Uribe Morenos made several public statements which were published on the official website of the Presidency of the Republic: a curi-ous development given that, according to current norms, the children of the President of Republic are simply citi-zens who should not have access to such facilities.

The cases of doubtful transparency in the business affairs of the Uribe Moreno family are in keeping with a political culture where such behaviours have become more the rule than the exception. The governing coali-tion is made up of innumerable family bonds which are

35).

6 Law 1259 of 2008, Number 6, Article 6.

not unlike the links binding together the old monarchies. The diplomatic service offers an excellent example: Ms Teresita García Romero, sister of the “para-politician” Ál-varo García was Consul to Frankfurt. Senator José Name was rewarded with the naming of his daughter, Margarita Rose Name, to the Colombian Mission to the United Na-tions just a few weeks after he supported the constitu-tional reform that facilitated the first reelection of the current leadership. The son of Carlos Holguín Sardi, ex-Minister of the Interior of this government, was made Ambassador to Ecuador. The son of Fernando Araujo, former Chancellor of the second Uribe administration and would-be presidential candidate for the Conserva-tive Party, was a civil servant with wide-ranging powers in the Colombian Embassy to the United States in a strange arrangement which has still not been clarified.

In accordance with the criticisms of the Liberal Party, appointments for politicians’ family-members and busi-ness leaders close to the President explain the enlarge-ment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ staff in Spain, the United States, Venezuela, Israel and the Popular Republic of China. Additionally, new senior diplomatic service po-sitions have been announced in the Vatican, the United States, Japan, Egypt, the European Union, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Peru, Sweden, the Dominican Re-public and Venezuela (Quevedo 2008).

The existence of such nepotistic practices in the gov-ernment was recognised by the Minister of Justice and the Interior, Fabio Valenci Cossio, who affirmed that “in his first government the Head of State began to name par-liamentarians’ family-members in diplomacy” (elespecta-dor.com 2008a). Interesting words, coming from a state employee whose brother is being investigated for pos-sible links to the mafia during the period when he was Director of Public Prosecutions in Medellín. Interesting, but false, given that it has been possible to ascertain that during the second government of the current lead-ership there has been a regular traffic of notaries involv-ing parliamentarians’ family-members in the government coalition. The sixth notary of Barranquilla, for example, was given to Claudia Betancourt, the wife of Jaime Amín, former Representative to the Chamber of the coalition government, (Noticiasuno [a]). Another exemplary case is that of Luz Marina Campo, second notary of Tunja, who was named thanks to her closeness to Tomás Uribe, who

had spoken personally to the Secretary of the Presidency, Bernardo Moreno, to pressure for her appointment (No-ticiasuno [b])

Another episode revealing the importance of close friends to the President was revealed when the magis-trate César Julio Valencia affirmed that the President had called him to ask about the fortunes of the investiga-tion into his cousin Mario Uribe, who had been judicially linked to paramilitarism. The incident generated an of-ficial complaint against the magistrate which is still being argued in the Commission of Accusations in the Cham-ber (elespectador.com 2008b).

And the palm oil issue, which is also linked to family connections, raises its head again. Oscar Iván Zuluaga, Minister for Taxation, is the nephew of Mario Escobar Aristizábal, majority partner of the firm Sapunga S.A. Sa-bana de Puerto Gaitán, which cultivates palm oil. Minis-ter for Communications María del Rosario Guerra is the wife of Juan Mesa Dishington, President of Fedepalma, the main professional association of the palm oil sector. Martha Pinto, who was Minister for Communications from August 2002 is married to César de Hart Vengoechea, a member of the board of Fedepalma. María Fernanda Zu-ñiga Chaux, who was President of Fiduagraria, the state trust for the agricultural sector, was also a member of the board of directors of Urapalma S.A. and Palmura S.A.; the former civil servant is the daughter of Antonio Zuñiga Caballero, legal representative of Urapalma, who is under investigation for the usurpation of lands and forced dis-placement of black communities in Chocó (lespectador.com 2008c). She is also the niece of Juan José Chaux, who likewise has cases pending in the justice system. All of these connections have been criticised in the web page of “La silla vacía” (the Empty Seat).7

How to publicise in order to conceal (or the importance of the nocturnal and the subterranean)

A certain instinct for self-preservation makes us fear the dark, and for this reason we tend to reject nocturnal and

7 La silla vacía, “Esta es la genealogía de la palma en el gobierno de Álvaro Uribe” (“This is the geneology of palm in the government of Álvaro Uribe”), available at: http://www.lasillavacia.com/historia/192


subterranean animals. Those species that live in darkness don’t offer much reassurance: moths, bats and rodents that scurry around in the sewers provoke an innate sense of distrust. A hypothesis derived from the paradigm of evolution suggests that we have inherited our fear of the dark from our primate ancestors: in human animals the importance of the sense of vision coincides with pro-gressive limitations in smell and hearing, thereby making darkness a source of danger (Vélez 2006: 148 y ss).

Perhaps the innate fear of the dark is related to our faith in that which is public, understood as that which sees the light of day and which we can see and hear effectively. That which is hidden, and which does not appear before our eyes and cannot be heard is the an-tithesis of what we understand as public. It was Hannah Arendt who best employed this analogy: “everything that is public can be seen and heard by everybody and has the widest possible publicity” (Arendt 1993).

The aforementioned would seem to suggest that nocturnality and the public realm do not make a good couple. It is for this reason that it seems strange for the government to take to the darkness to make decisions or to “publish” them, given that a nocturnal publication is a contradiction in terms. Nonetheless, and in contradic-tion of normal practices, the particular style of govern-ment in Colombia in recent years has used nocturnality as a shelter for decision-making:1. On 16 December 2008, at 11.30pm, Decree 4742

was issued, seeking extraordinary sessions of the Chamber of Representatives. The decree was issued 30 minutes before the normal period of the session drew to a close, and was read to the plenary 11 min-utes after being issued.

2. At midnight on Friday 10 June the President pub-lished the shortlist for the new Attorney General to replace Mario Iguarán.

3. On Sunday 7 June at 9pm, the Presidential Palace issued a statement to set out the functions that would be vested in the Financial Information and Analysis Unit (UIAF), a body that monitored the fi-nances of the magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice in a non-transparent manner.

4. In the early hours of Monday 17 November 2008, a public holiday, the President ordered intervention in the pyramid scheme company DMG.

5. In the early hours of 13 May 2008 the extradition was ordered of the principal paramilitary chiefs to the United States.

6. The liquidation of public entities such as Cajanal, Inravision and Telecom coincided with the night-time capture of these businesses by the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squad, ESMAD.

Communiques that appear on a Sunday night are published in order not to become public, although this sounds contradictory. The nightime seizing of compa-nies in liquidation or businesses suspected of fraudulent fundraising, far from demonstrating a strategic success, suggests that the state must hide its decisions in order to gain an advantage over certain social sectors. The pub-lic legitimacy of governmental decisions is replaced by stratagem and concealment in order to defeat those who would not be in agreement with decisions.

Complementing this nocturnality, another character-istic of the current government is the use of the subter-ranean as a resource. Not even in the darkest periods of the Republic has the basement of the Presidential Palace become a protagonist. The infamous meeting in “Casa de Nari”, where an admitted ex-paramilitary met with senior government staff to devise a conspiracy against the mag-istrates of the Supreme Court of Justice, reflects a sur-reptitious approach to politics that is a terrible threat to democracy. This is compounded by the fact the meeting was convened by Gustavo Tapias Ospina, former member of the Medellín cartel and now close friend of José Obdu-lio Gaviria and Alfazar González, the latter being a presi-dential adviser for the municipalities who also maintained close links with the firm DMG (Coronell 2009: 26).

It seems symptomatic that senior government staff meet with criminals to conspire against one of the most important institutions of the judicial system; the govern-ment opts to make deals with those who break the law in order to attack those who defend the law. The nocturnal and the subterranean are not only a way to prevent pub-licity of governmental actions, but also a means to pervert the practice of democratic government through a propen-sity to conspire to break the law. In this sense, govern-ment means conspiring as much as administrating.

What matters is not ethics, law or the consolidation of the public realm, but a loyalty that is enmeshed with the shelter of darkness and conspiracy.

Friends’ opinions are fundamental (or how to defend the “goodfellas” and favour the lobbyists)

It can be said that, for this government, loyalty to the head of state is more important than respect for institu-tions. Nonetheless, it can be argued that the bonds of loyalty are fundamental to any person and in all demo-cratic states government is exercised among friends and not enemies. David Hume listed among the principal qualities that generate the sympathy and approval of hu-manity: beneficence, humanitarianism, friendship, grati-tude, natural affection and civic spirit (Hume 1993: 44). It could be said, then, that friendship and gratitude are two virtues that emanate in abundance from the President, but the question is that beneficence, humanitarianism and civic spirit are put in doubt when gratitude and friendship is shown for people of doubtful behaviour.

On one occasion the President showed his gratitude for a close friend by saying: “I would put my hands in the fire for him” (22 November 2006); and “I will con-tinue to believe in Jorge Noguera, because I have known him as an honest and clear man”(12 April 2006) (Semana magazine, 2007). Today, when we read these words, Jorge Noguera stands accused of the crimes of homicide and organising delinquency, of putting the structures of the DAS at the service of paramilitarism and of destroying records of the monitoring of drug traffickers and para-militaries. Without doubt, this “honest and clear” man is one of the President’s “goodfellas”. “Goodfellas” in the sense of the Martin Scorsese film which tells the story of a former low-level New York mafiosi who ends up inform-ing on his partners in crime. In this case the role played by Ray Liotta, the informer, was played by Rafael García, the latest snitch in the baroque national drama. (Semana magazine 2006: 38).

Another “goodfella” is Salvador Arana, who was governor of Sucre and Colombian Ambassador to Chile, appointed by the head of state. Arana is accused of or-dering the assassination of Eudaldo Díaz, Mayor of El Roble, who in a communal council declared, before the President, that his life was in danger (Semana magazine 2006: 50) – it seems that the communal councils work for giving out gifts but not for saving lives. One close friend of Arana is ex-senator Álvaro García Romero, his political sponsor and “eminent father of the country”,

who is accused of being the intellectual author of a mas-sacre perpetrated in Macayepo, municipality of Carmen de Bolívar, in which paramilitaries murdered 15 campesi-nos with garrotes, machetes and stones and displaced 200 families (Semana magazine 2006: 56). It is worth not-ing that the ex-senator García Romero was elected to Congress with the backing of Democratic Colombia, an electoral micro-enterprise which was founded in 1985 by the now-President of the Republic and whose leadership boasted, until his capture, the President’s cousin, ex–Senator Mario Uribe. Four of the parliamentarians from this party have been linked to the parapolitics scandal – an interesting figure given that, in the 2006-2010 pe-riod, Democratic Colombia obtained only five seats in Congress (Semana magazine 2006: 70)

The only parliamentarian from Democratic Colombia who has not been linked to paramilitaries is William Vélez, representative for Antioquia who will be remembered in history for three things: (1) For starting his career in poli-tics at the hand of the current President; (2) For push-ing forward the project that facilitated the change to the constitution that made re-election possible; (3) For being a friend of Pablo Escobar (when it was fashionable). But without a doubt, the case of Senator Miguel de la Espri-ella, also of Democratic Colombia, deserves special men-tion, as he is remembered for having organised the visit of three paramilitary chiefs to Congress (Mancuso, Isaza and Báez) on 28 July 2004, and “being one of the first to stop and greet them” (Semana magazine 2007: 37). He is also remembered as one of the congressmen splattered in the “8000 process” and for revealing the existence of the Ralito Pact between Córdoba politicians and para-military leaders. After spending some time in prison, he recovered his liberty. What is not often mentioned is that Miguel de la Espriella is a close friend of the President of the Republic, a friend that the same leader had to report to the Attorney General.

Juan José Chaux is another “goodfella” coming from a family of the finest lineage in Cauca. After his spell in the Cauca government, Chaux was proposed as Ambassador to the Netherlands, but the European country refused to accept his credentials and the politician was forced to settle for the Embassy in the Dominican Republic. Af-ter some time the paramilitaries, Ever Velosa alias “H.H.” and Fredy Rendón alias “the German”, accused this dis-


tinguished member of the Cauca elite of having been a been a paramilitary, working in a political capacity. “The German” recalled a meeting held at the estate “La 21”, which belonged to Carlos Castaño: “I can say that the ex-governor of Cauca Juan José Chaux, was political repre-sentative of the Calima bloc” (Semana magazine 2009: 32). Chaux also took part, together with Edmundo del Cas-tillo, Juridical Secretary of the Presidential Palace, and César Mauricio Veláquez, Press Secretary, in the famous “Casa de Nari” meeting which we spoke of above.

It is not a coincidence, therefore, that on some occasions the President of the Republic has given co-alition Congress members precise instructions saying: “Vote while you’re not in prison”. It is to be expected that a coalition under investigation for links to the worst criminals of recent times would be pursued by justice. What mattered to the President was not the culpability or innocence of the legislators, but whether they could guarantee loyalty to the government with their votes. The “goodfellas” of Congress had better behave themselves, and many would manage to vote through the legal proj-ects pushed by the presidency before being captured.

Some people may say that the personalities dis-cussed here are just a few rotten apples that have spoiled the government coalition, but the majority of them are people who move under the shelter of the law. It is im-portant to emphasise that many of the President’s close friend do not commit any crimes, but instead devote themselves to less controversial, but no less self-inter-ested, activities, such as lobbying. It is no coincidence that many former advisers from the Presidential Palace, and other senior staff members, move in lobbying circles like fish in water, as influence has long been their stomp-ing ground. According to a publication that is close to these circles of presidential power, these lobbyists:

“… Advise in processes of tendering or major contracts, but the small print is the work of others. The issuing of a law with a special article of paragraph, an opportune decree, an administrative act or resolution with a particu-lar interest, do form part of their professional priorities… they are generally ministers of top-level civil servants of a government who leave their posts, or persons who worked very close to a presidential candidate, who make use of their technical and juridical knowledge and closeness to those within the government. In the majority of cases, they

contribute to the issuing of general norms that later, from outside, they seek to apply to a particular interest”.8

And they explain it thus, without smiling, even though we value their honesty. This honesty is in their declara-tions, of course, not in their actions, as the explicit mes-sages are: (1) Persons close to the President decisively influence laws with “special” paragraphs, or with “op-portune” decrees; that is to say, official decisions adapt to the interests of some businesspersons thanks to the good efforts of the President’s friends; (2) In their time as civil servants they draw up norms that are apparently for the general interest, but which are later instrumentalised to serve their interests when they leave government. In summary, the lobby is a sophisticated way of saying cor-ruption – the only difference is that the perpetrator of corruption breaks the law, while the lobbyist uses influ-ence to create laws that suit them.

Who are the lobbyists? According to the magazine Poder (Power) (2009: 20) (which included a report, with photos, to praise rather than accuse them), the father and founder figure is Fabio Echeverri Correa, ex-presi-dential advisor and creator of innumerable theatrical terms, including one where he mentioned changing “one little article”. Among his successors are to be found two friends of the President: Néstor Humberto Martínez and José Roberto Arango, the latter remembered for quitting public service over a corruption scandal concerning con-tracts with the armed forces. Among the plentiful ranks of the lobbyists is Luz Marina Zapata, the wife of Ger-mán Vargas Lleras; Luis Guillermo Vélez, son of the late “uribista” senator of the same name, who together with William Pearl – brother of the peace commissioner Frank Pearl – and Martha Abdallah, has just set up an office to work together in the art of lobbying. It may seem exces-sive to compare the lobby to corruption, but one cannot help but consider it curious when the ex-director of the National Roads Institute, Daniel André García, was dis-missed by the Attorney General when, after incurring 11 irregularities, he decided to chart a new course in his life by opening a lobbying enterprise.

8 See article “Los top del lobby en Colombia” (“The toip lobbysits in Colombia”), in Poder magazine n.° 75, 27 June 2009, p 21.

Hume said it well: friendship and gratitude are very important, whenever they benefit the interests of hu-manity. But both the lobbyists and the “goodfellas” prac-tice friendship and gratitude for the sake of their own interests.

Conclusion: the state of loyalty as an inferior stage of the rule of law

Even though the term state of opinion has been circulat-ing with increasing presence in public debate in Colom-bia in recent years, what is clear is that we do not have clarity as to what exactly this concept entails. Nonethe-less, we can infer that the current government insists on the prevalence of opinion over institutions in order to guarantee the “state of loyalty”, where opinion is valued insofar as it reinforces fidelity to the head of state. The correct opinions strengthen loyalty even though they weaken institutions; incorrect opinions are censored even if they defend rights and legality; and from here the exercise of loyalty undermines the foundations of the rule of law.

In charismatic regimes loyalty is based on following an individual with exceptional characteristics as a guide or absolute chief, but in the state of loyalty charisma is supported by a game of freebies: subsidies, tax exemp-tions, tax-free zones, the roads and notary positions which ensure fidelity that cannot be guaranteed by cha-risma alone. It can also be said that a communal council is a combination of the two: presidential charisma com-bines with regional handouts, but is also a combination of an act of government and an act of political campaign-ing, as the permanent determination to be reelected obliges the president to remain on a continuous cam-paign, maintaining the two-sided character of an eternal president-candidate.

To the above we must also add the complex famil-ial network that surrounds the head of state in support of his leadership. In earlier times just as in modernity, the construction of the public realm is replaced by fam-ily bonds which facilitate the pursuit of wealth and the oligarchic exercise of power. Perhaps for these reasons, the public realm has gone from being luminous and open to living underground and in darkness, as loyalty does not need the public, though it does need publicity, pro-

motion and propaganda to maintain loyalty. From this starting point, the allies of the current government oscil-late between successful businesspersons and admitted criminals. What matters is not their origin or ethics, and the key is loyalty to the head of state.

With this in mind, it is fitting to remember the judg-ment of Jacob Burckhardt: “The people no longer believe in principles, but it is likely that, periodically, they will believe in saviours”. It is well-known that, on the major-ity of occasions, saviours do not bring about collective redemption - they are too busy saving themselves (and their families).

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b l iArticles and books

Agamben, Giorgio (2006), “La comunidad que vi-• ene” (“The Community That Is Coming”), Valencia, Pre-textos.

Agamben, Giorgio (2001), “Medios sin fin. Notas • sobre la política” (“Means Without End. Notes on Politics”), Valencia, Pre-textos.

Arendt, Hannah, (1993), “La condición humana” • (“The Human Condition”), Barcelona, Paidós.

Arendt, Hannah, (1997), “¿Qué es la política?” • (“What Is Politics?”), Barcelona, Paidós.

Arendt, Hannah, (2004), “Los orígenes del Totali-• tarismo” (“The Origins of Totalitarianism”), Taurus, México.

Benjamin, Walter, (2006), “El origen del Trauerspiel • alemán” (“The Origin of German Tragic Drama”), “Works”, Book I Volume I, Madrid, Abada.

Bobbio, Norberto, (1997), “El futuro de la democra-• cia” (“The Future of Democracy”), México, FCE.

Hume, David, (1993), “Investigación sobre los prin-• cipios de la moral” (“Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals”), Madrid, Alianza.


B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b l iMantilla Alejandro and Múnera Leopoldo, (2005), “El • poder político pastoral y la erosión del Estado Consti-tucional” (“Pastoral Political Power and the Erosion of the Constitutional State”) in “Cuando la excepción es la regla” (“When the Exception is the Rule”), Bogotá, Coor-dinación Colombia Europa Estados Unidos.

Moreno, Álvaro and Junca, Gustavo (2007), “Las con-• secuencias económicas de Sr. Uribe ¿otra vez los felices noventa?” (“The Economic Consequences of Mr Uribe. The Happy 1990s Once Again?”), in “Bien-estar y macroeconomía 2007. Más allá de la retórica” (“Wellbe-ing and Macroeconomy 2007. Beyond the Rhetoric”), Bogotá, Centre for Development Investigations, National University of Colombia, 2008.

Rodríguez Salazar, Oscar (2007), “Las transferencias: • entre el sistema de protección social, la gobernabilidad macro y la construcción territorial del Estado” (“Trans-fers: Between the Social Protection System and the Territorial Construction of the State”) in: “Bien-estar y macroeconomía 2007. Más allá de la retórica” (“Wellbe-ing and Macroeconomy 2007. Beyond the Rhetoric”), Bogotá, Centre for Development Investigations, National University of Colombia, 2008.

Vélez, Antonio, (2006) “Homo Sapiens”, Bogotá, Vil-• legas editores.

Presidential speeches and public documents

Colombian Institute for Rural Development, Action Plan • 2009, available at: www.incoder.gov.co

“Palabras del Presidente Álvaro Uribe durante la cena • ofrecida ante los Príncipes de Asturias” (“Words of the President Álvaro Uribe during a dinner for the Prince and Princess of Asturias”), available at: http://web.presiden-cia.gov.co/sp/2009/mayo/27/22272009.html

“Palabras del Presidente Uribe en el Congreso Colombi-• ano de Publicidad” (“Words of President Álvaro Uribe at the Colombian Publicity Congress”), available at: http://web.presidencia.gov.co/sp/2008/octubre/01/22102008.html

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b l i“Palabras del Presidente Álvaro Uribe en la clausura del • Seminario Internacional Más allá de la Crisis financiera” (“Words of President Álvaro Uribe at the closure of the International Seminar ‘Beyond The Financial Crisis’”), available at: http://web.presidencia.gov.co/sp/2009/mayo/28/15282009.html

Press releases

“Apretadito” (“Under Pressure”), • Semana magazine

n.°1282, 27 November - 4 December 2006.

“Crece 13.1% presupuesto de 2009 frente al de 2008 • radicado por el Congreso de la República” (“Budget for 2009 grows 13.1% on the 2008 budget of the Congress of the Republic”), available at: http://www.portafolio.com.co/economia/economiahoy/2008-07-30/ARTICULO-WEB-NOTA_INTERIOR_PORTA-4417140.html

Miglierini, Julián (2009) “Crónica de lo que dijo y • no dijo Uribe” (“Chronicle of what Uribe did and did not say”), available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/america_latina/2009/05/090504_1210_uribe_entre-vista_jm.shtml

“DAS-gate”, • Semana magazine, no.° 1295, 26 Febru-ary – 5 March 2007.

“De Ralito al Congreso” (“From Ralito to Congress”), • Semana magazine n.° 1291, 29 January - 5 February 2007.

“El Gobernador de la muerte” (“The Governor of • Death”), Revista magazine n.°1281, 20 - 27 November 2006.

“El poder del gordo” (The Power of the Fat One”), • Se-

mana magazine n.°1281, 20 - 27 November 2006.

“El ventilador” (“The ventilator”),• Semana magazine

n.° 1282, November 27 - 4 December 2006.

“Enredos de familia” (“Family Entanglements”), avail-• able at: http://www.elespectador.com/impreso/articu-loimpreso-enredos-de-familia (c)

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b l i“Esta es la genealogía de la palma en el gobierno de • Álvaro Uribe” (“This is the Geneology of Palm in the Government of Álvaro Uribe”), available at: http://www.lasillavacia.com/historia/192

“Familias en acción, entre la solidaridad y la politi-• quería” (“Families in Action: Between Solidarity and Politicking”), available at: http://www.elpais.com.co/paisonline/notas/Abril262009/famiaccion.html

“Ley para sufrir menos por el dólar” (“Law to Suffer • Less Because of the Dollar”), El Tiempo newspaper (b), Friday 24 July 2009, pp. 1-8.

“Los hijos del Presidente” (“The President’s Sons”), in • Semana magazine n.° 1387, 1 - 8 December 2008.

“Los top del lobby en Colombia” (“The Top Lobbyists in • Colombia”), in Poder magazine n.° 75, 27 June 2009.

“Mininterior reconoce que Roscograma se dio en el • primer Gobierno de Uribe” (“Interior Minister Recogn-ises that Roscograma was given in the first Uribe Gov-ernment”), available at: http://www.elespectador.com/articulo-mininterior-reconoce-roscograma-se-dio-primer-gobierno-de-uribe

“Nadie lo destrona” (“Noone Dethrones Him”) in • Se-

mana magazine (a) n.° 1430, 28 September - 5 Octo-ber 2009.

Noticias Uno (b), • http://www.noticiasuno.com/noticias/grabacin-relaciona-hijo-del-presidente-con-notara.html

Noticias Uno (a), http://www.noticiasuno.com/noticias/• los-cargos-de-amin.html

“Política en acción” (“Politics In Action”), “http://www.• semana.com/noticias-nacion/politica-accion/124035.aspx

“Solo los gringos conocerán la verdad” (“Only the Grin-• gos will Know the Truth”) interview with Fredy Rendón, “el Alemán” (“the German”), in Semana magazine n.° 1410, 11 - 18 May 2009.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b l i“Uribe: El Estado de opinión es la fase superior del • Estado de Derecho” (“Uribe: the State of Opinion is the Higher Stage of the Rule of Law”), available at: http://www.lasillavacia.com/historia/2296

“¿Agro privilegio seguro?” (“Agriculture Privilege Cer-• tain?”), Semana magazine, (b) n.° 1431, 5 - 12 October 2009.

“¿Qué es el Estado de Opinión de Uribe?” (“What is • Uribe’s state of opinion”), El Tiempo newspaper (a), Tuesday 28 July 2009, p 1-4.

-“¿Reelección? Otra pregunta, amigo” (“Reelection? • Next Question My Friend!”), available at: http://www.semana.com/noticias-politica/reeleccion-otra-pregunta-amigo-uribe/123626.aspx

“Uribe demandará por Injuria y Calumnia a Presi-• dente de la Corte” (“Uribe Will Sue for Slander and Libel the President of the Court”), available at: http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/artic-ulo-uribe-demandara-injuria-y-calumnia-presidente-de-corte (b)

Opinion articles

Coronell, Daniel, 18 April 2009, “Sobrados de lote” • (“Surplus from the Batch”), available at: http://www.se-mana.com/noticias-opinion/sobrados-lote/122986.aspx

Coronell, Daniel, “Tocando Techo” (“Touching the Roof”), • Semana magazine, n.° 1488, 8 - 15 June 2009.

Kalmanovitz, Salomon, “Etanol bien caro” (“Expensive • Ethanol”), available at: http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/columnistasdelimpreso/salomon-kalmanovitz/columna94973-etanol-bien-caro

Quevedo, Norbey (2008), “¿Meritocracia o reparto • político?” (“Meritocracy or Political Sharing Out”), avail-able at: http://www.partidoliberal.org.co/root/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=749

Vélez Vieira, Cristina, “Pasaron las vacas gordas y • nos quedamos con las trochas” (“The Fat Cats Have Passed and We’re Left With the Short Straw”) avail-able at: www.lasillavacia.com/printpdf/historia/193


Between a gang of thieves and their subjects: ethical questions in the era of “democratic security”Carlos E. Angarita S.

Beyond the social-scientific analysis which we employ to explore social is-sues – which is absolutely necessary – it can be asked whether an ethical reflection might offer other elements which would foresee a way of overcom-ing the existing state of affairs which is currently overwhelming Colombia.

Ethics, whatever their focus may be, constitute a base of public le-gitimation for any social actor. And in particular, ethics may be an instru-ment for strengthening popular actors in the humane construction of their dignity, that is to say, in the laborious effort to be recognised as sub-jects with interests, needs, desires and potentials. This is so because eth-ics form the framework from which the principles which mobilise people, communities and collectives to act in a certain way, and adopt positions in relation to other actors, are made explicit. These principles manifest in ideas and/or images that can inhabit the human interior and subjectively configure those who participate in social life, creating distinct identities in the process.

Ethics, as understood here, are a reflection which leads us to explore the ultimate motivations for which determined communities accept as valid certain customs, practices, norms and regulations. Such motives grow from diverse sectors of society, generally those with power and, as such, capacity to legitimise and establish their values as foundations for the integration of all their members, that is to say, that they be accepted universally.

In specific, we are interested in this case to examine the role of the Colombian state in the conformation of public ethics in recent years, according to the supposition that, although other factors can also achieve this, the current government has a decisive role in this arena, unto the point where its actions presumably enjoy acceptance. In consequence, it is necessary to examine which ethics we are dealing with. But it is also neces-sary to further analyse what principles could be feasible in promoting an alternative ethics capable of mobilising victimised social sectors in search of their fundamental rights. In any case, if there are sectors that resist

* Teacher and Researcher, University Javeri-ana and Pedagogical & Technological Uni-versity of Colombia, Tunja.

INDEX

6060 Between a gang of thieves and their subjects: ethical questions in the era of “democratic security” 61Break the spell or more of the same? 61

being denied their dignity it is because they find ethical conviction enough to do so, and this can serve as a source of hope for others in similar positions.

Recent antecedents for the ethical question in Colombia

The current configuration of ethics from the Colombia state has immediate antecedents, in its own arena, which must be made explicit. By identifying these, albeit rap-idly, one can better understand the ethical system that is currently establishing hegemony in the country.

During the government of César Gaviria (1990-1994), the situation brought about by the National Constituent Assembly allowed, in our judgment, two elements that would activate the social dynamic to emerge: participa-tion and hope. The former was strengthened by the fact that certain social sectors - the indigenous, afrocolom-bians, the youth, emergent political forces and insurgent zones - all of whom had traditionally been excluded from the institutional political arena, had a voice and vote in deciding and formulating the Magna Carta and still, a pos-teriori to this, for the first time. The latter was nourished by the positive mood that was then awakened and which sustained the idea that changes were taking place in a society that was being punished by years of uncontrolled violence. However, in the same period of government new phenomena, which acted in contrary to the materialisa-tion of these principles, were also gestating: participation was rapidly capitalised upon by the agents of neoliberal globalisation and the uncontainable growth in violence continued to impose itself as the preferred form of politi-cal action and means to bring about change.

Disenchantment followed during the government of Ernesto Samper (1994-1998), when instability and dead-end politics took hold. The crisis stemming from the en-meshment of drug trafficking with the political system and in particular with the state, delegitimised many of the political leaders, among whom a new idea was pos-tulated as a principle of social coexistence and survival – one which came from the mafias: loyalty. In effect, by way of reaction to the moralised campaign of the North American government, represented by the Embassador at the time, Myles Frechette, the perception that what was in play was fidelity, or lack thereof, to the under-fire president, took hold. The aim of this was to preserve the

institution of the first magistrate and, insodoing, the en-tire state. At the same time, a secondary internal ethi-cal reference, represented by the Catholic Church, burst onto the scene. Under its well-known framework of moral judgment, with great difficulty it managed to denouce what was already evident: that there was corruption in Colombian society, especially in the political class. But despite its imputations the end result was only a certain repositioning of the Catholic hierarchy in managing to win recognition for itself as an indispensible actor for fu-ture peace processes (Angarita 2003).

The Andrés Pastrana administration (1998-2002) was known for the strategic alliance between its govern-ment and the North American government of Bill Clinton, which produced the corollary, during the first half of this period, of making trust one of the principles of coexis-tence for Colombian society.

Trust included the articulation of two elements which formed part of the same strategy: peace processes with the principal insurgency in the country and reengineer-ing of the military through Plan Colombia (Angarita [et al], 2000).

This famous dialogue between the government and Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia sup-posed the inclusion of Colombian society. With this, An-drés Pastrana hoped to echo the Citizens’ Mandate for Peace, Life and Liberty of 1997. Thus, the principle of trust between governments was transferred to part of Colombian civil society. However, the well-known failure of the dialogue process, developed in San Vicente de Caguán, brought an end to these attempts at rapproach that never seemed to prosper. If anyone had believed in habermasian pacts, he would now have to keep his silence. On the contrary, there was a growing sensation of a society in a debacle, without principles, long-since trapped by enemy forces built on illicit activities that could not be negotiated with, but instead would have to be pursued without mercy. In order to achieve this, it would be necessary to seize upon a safe formula.

Principles and ethical mediation in the democratic security regime

Álvaro Uribe (2002-2006 and 2006 into an unclear future) presented a programme of government that turned on two axes: the comunitary state and democratic security. The former, in appearance more globalising in character,

asides from presenting development plans, has ended up being diluted. The latter, in contrast, was more tangible and favourable for the shaping of public opinion. Ethi-cally, on what is it based?

There are two expressions frequently employed by President Uribe, with which he sums up the objective of his governmental project: “return to the empire of the law” and “to return authority to the state”. In other words, in addressing instability and the loss of direction of Colombian society, law and authority become abso-lute ends: in the face of chaos, the principle of order, in the face of threat, the principle of security. Under these banners, to bring about a permanent “state of opinion”1 molded day after day through various means, Uribe Vélez forged a majority ethical reference with which he legiti-mated the use of violence by the state against those who were declared enemies. In his strategy the various ideas described above are combined: participation, hope, loy-alty and trust, but no longer as principles for social func-tionality, but instead as individual decisions expressed as the will of the citizenry and each citizen to alienate, delegate and transfer their autonomy to the supreme governor and a project of social homogenisation.

How has he done it? It involves a political process that incorporates the ethical perspective, in the sense that we have been exploring it: not only consolidating power, but also deliberately seeking the support of social subjectivity to support the regime that is being installed. This ethical-political strategy, in a general sense, makes

1 The article by Alejandro Mantilla published in this docu-ment, “Neither State of Opinion, Nor Rule of Law: the State of Loyalty”, offers a careful analysis of this expression. On 20 June 2009, at the inauguration of the Congress of the Republic, President Uribe once again offered a descrip-tion, this time “more complete”, with regard to what this concept means: “the higher phase and characteristic of excellence of the rule of law”, with which the primordial alliance between government and citizenry is ensured “is not manipulation but is the courage to give orientation on issues of great controversy; it is respect for opinions ex-pressed and laws enabling silent opinions to be expressed; it is not the imposition by force or surrender to opposing forces; it is the guarantee of freedom of the press and its counterbalance, which is the freedom of the citizenry and the government before the media of communication…”.

use of the power resources available to the state to cre-ate links with the different strata of society. With these, relations become more stable, that is to say, they are instituted (but are not institutionalised2): it is a neo-cor-poratist model (Angarita y Martínez, 2002). Through the corporations, whoever is at the centre of power creates a focus which is directly reproduced as power at distinct levels and with different modalities, not exactly to decen-tralise, but instead to concentrate centrifugal dynamics around an ethical-political nucleus which simultaneously maintains order and brings security to the subjects.

The neo-corporatist strategy has been applied and has taken effect, dramatically, in the Congress of the Republic. Its implementation has been linked to a parallel process - the configuration of “uribista” parties: this has sought to ensure not just the classic model of clientelistic exchange of goods, but also to mold and subjectively commit those who are involved in negotiations and the hammering out of agreements. As a result, forces appear which declare themselves to be “uribista”, and which are willing to give their lives for the cause of democratic security.

The corporatist strategy has also been deployed among the major economic sectors. Thus, that which was previously the role of the sector closest to the new president, the Colombian Federation of Livestock Farm-ers, in support of the so-called anti-terrorist struggle, has become the unrestricted commitment of all sectors with-out exception. From among these Uribe recently sought his new Minister of Defence: he couldn’t come from the farmers, nor the industrialists, but he could be from the National Federation of Coffee Growers. With this gesture he managed to tie up the will of those who would be

2 Institutionalisation supposes the formalisation of a system of relations. Even if this practice gives a more solid and secure resource, it removes versatility to operate; the insti-tuted, by contrast, is understood as visible systems of ar-ticulation which, however, have the characteristic of alter-ing agreement according to the demands of power: today this idea can be adopted, tomorrow another. In the former case we are speaking, for example, of the organs of the political systems defined explicitly by the Constitution and the law; in the latter category we refer to certain functions that are improvised within the state (ad hoc ministries, councils, commissions) or government policies (demobili-sation policies, policies for informers, social policies…)


decisive in financing the war against “drug trafficking and terrorism”, the foundation of democratic security.

Nonetheless, one of the greatest successes achieved by Uribe has been the reproduction of corporatist senti-ment among large parts of the wider population, through the Communal Councils staged assiduously the length and breadth of the country. Through this practice he has gradually cultivated among the population an image as the head of a family, with all the decision-making capac-ity, efficiency and authority that goes with it, and the cor-responding impact on the daily lives of those governed. This massive impact has also involved the premeditated and systematic use of the communication media, es-pecially in moments when it has become necessary to explain - showing his face directly - crucial decisions, both positive and negative, with respect to his policy of democratic security.3 The fruits of this part of the strat-egy have been harvested in the foundation corporations, that is, among those that are favoured by certain focal programmes: families and young people in action, social interest housing, the demobilised, informers, reparations for victims… with all of these it has been possible to proj-ect a populist sentiment of human and social protection.

On the other hand, issues such as “parapolitics”, the “false positives” scandal and DAS wiretaps take centre stage, just as the corporate networks are built on clan-destine dynamics that attack the principle of public eth-ics, such as transparency. What is being described here are processes through which secret agreements have been established which combine patterns among the institutional, the non-institutional and the instituting. Ethically, one might speak of distortions to the corporat-ist strategy, apparently carried out by the subordinates of the President, against whom there is little more than

3 Among the failed actions that he explained publicly, we recall, were Operation Urrao (May 2003) in which the former Minister of Defence Gilberto Echeverri and for-mer Governor of Antioquia Guillermo Gaviria were killed, among others. Similarly, the “false postives” scandal led him to announce the immediate dismissal of three gener-al, four coronels, six lieutenent coronels, three majors, one captain, one lieutenant, and six army sub-officials. Among the successes that he has been able to publicise have been the death of Raúl Reyes and Operation Jaque, which took place in February and June 2008, respectively.

suspicion, and scarcely any evidence. However, the phe-nomenon, when taken as a whole, begins to reveal an Achilles’ heel of corporatism: it depends substantially on loyalties, and if anyone in the network breaks away for whatever reason, the break multiplies exponentially. As a consequence, the principles of order and security may lose their hold and wind up cracking progressively.

Democratic security as the ethics of the band of thieves

Might the principles and methods outlined here, more than being part of a political conception, reflect some ethical tradition?

Franz Hinkelammert (1998) has taken up the analysis of an ethical model which has its origins in the philoso-phy of Plato – explained in his book The Republic – but which, according to him, has been repeatedly updated over the course of Western cultural history, first with Saint Augustine, in the Middle Ages, then with Martin Lu-ther in the Renaissance and some time later with Adam Smith in modernity. The lesson of this book would also seem current in the ethos of the market, which forms the backbone of current societies. Given our space limits, we will stick to examining - at the hands of the German au-thor - the rationality of the Greek philosopher, in so far as it offers a framework that endures and appears today in the Colombian state, the object of our analysis.

Plato’s ethical argument reflects the need to make an adjustment in his philosophical system with regard to the perfecting of the polis. Plato supposed that his ideal model of society already existed, but it could be desta-bilised because of human errors that drove the ethical formulation. The problem that Plato warns of is that the ideal of justice (understood as adherence to the law) fell apart if opened to the possibility that, in attacking an-other state, justice was not employed:

“What I wanted to know is if a state becomes the possessor of another state, can it carry out this enterprise without employing justice, or will need to make use of it? Do me the favour of saying whether a state, an army, a gang of bandits and thieves, or any other society of this genre could triumph in its unjust enterprises, if the members that make it violate, some with respect to others, all the laws of jus-tice”. (“The Republic”, 1057)4

4 The Plato quotes are taken from the Franz Hinkelammert

Thus the philosopher brought together, as societ-ies, the state with the army and a band of thieves. And he equipped them with their ends in mind: any of these societies could aim to attack another society. But this was not regarded as unjust, save that the injustice be in not applying justice internally. That is to say, in that the society, in making the attack, would break with the internal rules that preserved justice. This is the ethical formulation of the band of thieves, given that the logic of this type of society was converted by Plato into the guiding criteria of all human societies. Thus, that which guaranteed the state of perfection of the polis was not the ends it proposed, nor the principles they supported,5 but the ethics of procedure: not to harm the members of the society, even though causing harm to those that did not belong to it:

“…when he has supposed that injustice does not impede the common execution of some design, this supposition does not rest on truth, because if in reality they were un-just, they would mutually employ injustice against one an-other. It is evident that they conserve among themselves the remnants of justice that stops them from harming one another while they cause harm to others, and that it is through justice that they carry out their enterprises. In truth, it is injustice that makes them conceive of criminal enterprises, but they are only partly bad, because those who are entirely unjust are also in an absolute impossibility of effort (“The Republic”, 1059)

As a consequence of this rationale, “that the polis is organised as a band of thieves does not trouble him. His problem lies in how to avoid the army of the po-lis becoming, from within, another band of thieves that robs it” (Hinkelammert 1998: 162). For this reason Plato

text (1998).

5 A taxonomy of ethical tendencies distinguishes them ac-cording to how they are supported: for their principles, or by their mediation or procedures, or according to the ends they propose. In our case, we would be in the second cat-egory, which corresponds to the saying “the ends justify the means: although apparently the ends are prioritised, in real terms validity of any means is imposed, even though this intrinsically contradicts both the aims and the principles proclaimed. What matters it to understand that the ethic of procedures renounces – even though it may not wish to – the universalistion postulated in favour of the particularity of its methods.

proposes that the military - that part of society always prepared to attack - be subject to magistrates that are philosophers. And this idea is possible according to his perfect conception of the polis:

“…it is necessary that they be soft with their friends, and that they save all ferocity for their enemies. The example that shows that this is possible is found in dogs” (“The Republic” 1086)

The other procedures that had to be preserved in fa-vour of the perfect state - we stress that, for Plato, these wouldn’t come about but instead, in large part, already existed in the polis - were the production of institutiona-lised myths that would continuously reanimate the im-age of perfection6 and the aristocratic government and monarchy that would avoid oligarchy, democracy and tyranny.7 These strategies complement the framework of procedural ethics in order to sustain the principle of or-der and stability and would suggest the achievement of perfection as an absolute end.

The analogies that can be established with the ethical framework promoted by the current Colombian government are inarguable. By this we do not mean to presume that Uribe Veléz has read Plato, but that he - most likely without realising it - subscribes to a system of thought created in the West. We see similarities between this more modern system of ethics and its ancient pre-decessor. The principle of perfection expounded by the platonic social model has the same orientation as Álvaro Uribe’s democratic security: if this is made concrete in justice as adherence to the law, then this manifests in the empire of the law and authority of the state. Harmony

6 He said: “We begin, before all, by observing the forgers of fables. We choose those that are convenient and dis-card the rest” (The Republic, 1089). And further along he maintains: “And if we wish for the defenders of our republic to be horrified by dissent and discord, neither should be speak of the batlles of the gods, or the ropes that we bind one another with, asides from the fact that all this is not certain …” (Ibidem, p 1091).

7 The Platonic vision is pessimistic. It sees much strength in models of government that threaten the aristocractic-monarchic government, but at the same time it sees no way that this can last. The only thing that occurs to him is the figure of the philosopher-king, which, according to his own criteria, seems possibly too idealistic to become a reality.


and stability, order and security are synonyms inspired by the model of social integration in both these idealistic systems of thought.

But the most decisive issue, as we have said, is that the bands of thieves forge procedural ethics. The proce-dure is the ethics, and the ethics is the procedure. The thieves are so because they justify the need to attack others who do not know, or are not covered by, the sys-tem of justice and law that is shared by the members of the band of thieves. In order to effectuate this state of affairs, they accept any type of procedure that strength-ens the gang and they allow for doing harm to others: this is why they are thieves. However, Plato does not sug-gest specific measures: Uribe, in contrast, deploys the corporatist strategy to define who should form part of the society of thieves: in the gang the rules are set out (though they are modified when convenient) according to which it is determined who is within the gang and who is an outsider. Those who fall outside the group are de-clared unjust and enemies and a target for justice, even if it may be through unjust methods. The criteria of ethics is the band of thieves, per se and the criteria of truth is the ethics of the band of thieves. From this position enemies and detractors are identified and the argument is made for violence against them.

Plato’s “Republic” was already underway, but it re-mained under threat. It was the ideal of happiness that could be lost. Uribe Velez’s democratic security virtually restored calm to all those Colombians who had lived in fear and insecurity, but it is a work that demands to be consolidated yet further. The stumbling block that the Athenian philosopher, somewhat paradoxically, proposed led him to think up the non-existent (impossible and weak) figure of the philosopher king: the Colombian leader is something more daring – faced with the instability of his social mode, he has created the conditions to postulate himself as the ideal and messianic figure required.8

8 With regard to this, see elespectador.com (2009), “La en-crucijada del alma” (“Crossroads of the Soul”), a phrase which President Uribe has used to “elevate” the question of reelection to the metaphysical: “Colombia has many good people… I have been a combatant of democracy. But it worries me greatly what could happen with these policies. I have a responsibility to the people of Colombia.

On another note, if from the myths of the Greek gods, the discord and battles “invented by Homer”, should dis-appear, terms like conflict and paramilitarism should like-wise be removed from the fables of democratic security, as apparently none of these exist either. We must also tell and repeat the myth of peace and post-conflict, until we all speak with one unanimous voice created by the pred-icators9 and all their listeners, and when this happens the government regime will have been consolidated. The time of the myth is metaphysical, so the full installation of the aforementioned narrative is outside of the corpo-ral time of mortals - it is a total abstraction. It is an issue of the gods… and of accepting their will.

Towards and ethics of the living subject: life as an affirmation of human rights

The hegemonic system of ethics which we have just described has various distinctive features

Firstly, it formulates abstract general principles that may or may not exist, but are presented as promises to be delivered. Security, for example, is not a complete reality – it is a question of believing that it will one day come. In this sense, this ethics makes abstraction of the real, that is to say, of the concrete life and death of human beings. Better said, it erects itself as the administrator of death saying, in a hypothetical sense, how many deaths will be avoided.

Secondly, and deriving from what has just been ex-plained, the ethics of the band of thieves is inscribed into the rationality of calculating utility. In effect, it assumes that there must be death (without speaking of deaths) in order for there to be life (without speaking of the ac-tual lives of specific men and women, or of communities or natural systems). It supposes that as a rationality it is threatened and must therefore do away with its de-tractors, and for this reason it calculates how to attack them, declaring them enemies, terrorists, people who are

So when I see all this in the balance I create what I myself call the ‘crossroads of the soul’. How difficult!”, he said.

9 On 20 July 2009 Uribe Vélez began his speech to Con-gress by affirming: “We are not yet at an irreversible point regarding the rescue of security; the consensus on this im-perative is apparent, as yet we have not achieved a genu-ine commitment from the different political tendencies”.

no longer people, faceless humans who have lost their humanity. And it makes “precise” prescriptions, the time required and resources necessary to destroy them, along with methods of control and subjugation. Organising this device to administer death, it imagines unparalleled utility: growth, progress, development, peace. And more than anything else, order. These are all intangibles, it is clear: they are chimeric goods par excellence. In sum, they are abstract calculations.

Lastly, according to this system of ethics only ab-stract judgments are possible, and only abstract judg-ments make sense. That is, those understandings that adhere to the means-ends relation: that which helps obtain utility (albeit abstract) is good, and that which impedes this is bad. From here are derived metaphysical values, without life.

Thus, an alternative or counter-hegemonic system of ethics must respond to the ethics of the band of thieves. In its formulation the three main substantive elements must be discussed. This is what we wish to explore, suc-cinctly, as follows.

If the band of thieves makes abstract the life-death relation, the alternative ethics must make this relation explicit, and affirm life. As a relationship, it should not be affirmed in abstract but in concrete terms. Hinkelammert says: “It is not ethics that affirms life, but the affirmation of life that creates ethics. It is inseparable (…) Ethics is the affirmation of life. This is difficult to distinguish, but nonetheless where there are ethics there is also neces-sarily affirmation of life”. In other words, in any action or human relationship it is always possible to reaffirm or to deny life, either we create life or we kill it, and of this we cannot make abstraction as if it did not happen. Thus, in this sense, we are speaking of an ethics of life.

Moreover, as in rational understanding, if reality is abstracted from the fact that in every action life and death are what is in play, the counter-hegemonic ethics is formulated as material rationality, that is, as comprehen-sion and expression of the world of relations between subjects and of these with nature. And these relation-ships cannot be subjected to closed and absolute cal-culations, as within these the imponderable, the other possibility, can always play a role. In sum, this is the lively dynamic of life. The other, our habitat, is a reality that,

in order to exist, demands to be recognised in every mo-ment by every one of us, and if we fail to do so, we wind up killing it. To affirm them, we require a language that is vital, concrete, rather than generic, and which is close and open, rather than far away and closed. In this sense, we are speaking of an ethics of the living subject.

Finally, this ethics of the living subject procures the judgment of concrete fact. In this sense, it always inves-tigates and asks “what promotes life in this community, of these people, and what denies it? Does this behaviour, this decision, help to preserve the life of the habitat in which we dwell?” Thus, the key criteria is the life which is experienced by the subject which make it conscious.

In the social dynamic of our country we find actors who constitute subjects. What they do and what they say can be a reference for consolidating an ethics of the liv-ing subject with which to counter the ethics of the band of thieves. We’ll see.

The mere fact that there exist sectors in society that oppose the project of the band of thieves and that they publicly express their refusal to form part of them, de-nouncing the diverse means by which they administer death instead of affirming life, is eloquent in this regard. This is revealed by the multiple collective actions enunci-ated in the article by the Team of Social Movements - Cinep - in this book. With the attitude of all of them - sometimes more, sometimes less - there becomes visible a criteria of affirmation of life to create a new system of ethics: life is recognised socially, rebelling against those who administer death and shouting. From here rises the subject who has been repressed, Franz Hinkelammert assure us. But among these actions, it is worth emphasising two movements: the indigenous struggle, which has been pushing the “Minga” of social and community resistance of the people, and the Victims of State Criminality (Movice) movement. In our judgment, in these two movements in particular, the issue of the ethics of life takes centre stage.

For the indigenous life is expressed as a present and a past that remains present in the present. Thus they asserted their position in the Indigenous and Popular Mandate: “It always served us to get back to our origins, to accept a hand from the wisdom contained in our col-lective memories, listen the elders and get close to na-ture to make ourselves part of the life of everything and


defend ourselves by defending it”. And this way life now finds itself under threat:

Not solely our cultures, our communities, and our fami-lies are at risk. It is worse, life itself runs the risk of be-ing destroyed by the blindness of those who are mistaken and who use the greatest power in history to convert in merchandise all that exists through their Project of Death (Indigenous and Popular Mandate 2009).

When facing imminent death there is nothing left but to grasp life, which is the subject that is acting: “What should still be no longer exists in our commitment, in the memory of all that lives and in that which we have to invent, to sew and to protect to open the path”. Here we have the foundation of collective action: “This time we head out to convene communities, organisations and popular processes (…) we march to express our com-mitment to uniting and working to weave the reciprocal solidarity that is needed to defend life.”

For this, no calculation of utility, but the word that grows from life itself, can serve. This is true because it can be seen walking, acting. Since 2008 the indigenous have been saying “the Minga continues spreading the word through the country” and that it walks not only with them. “Slowly but surely the Minga grows, little by little it is configuring in the panorama the shaping of the social fabric that is so badly needed by the popular struggle in Colombia.” It is universal and in some, as yet unde-fined, moment, it will become a “Popular Congress of the Peoples” and “develop a peace agenda in the framework of a national proposal which takes different methods to those of war which are implemented by the national gov-ernment and the guerrillas.”

This ethics, moreover, is built from the judgment of concrete facts about those who deny the reality of life in Colombia: “the national government’s monopoly of the peace dialogues”, the militarisation of national life which deepens with the gringo bases; impunity and forced dis-placement and the “laws of displacement” which include the free trade agreements, the laws of territorial reorder-ing and the privatisation of water resources, mines and environmental zones, many of which are taken from the same indigenous communities.

Movice, meanwhile, has made sure that in the public sphere aggression against life in Colombia, perpetrated by the state and the paramilitaries, is recognised as an

irrefutable fact of present and recent history. In other words, the victims, both absent and present, remain a part of collective social life. To make this fact visible, as a point of departure, it has been proposed to make “a unified effort at building trust among diverse social, po-litical and ethnic sectors that have been harmed by the authoritarian strategy of the state”.

Thus, it adopts a perspective that implies going fur-ther than the strategic rationality of cost-benefit, invert-ing the effort-utility of results. It is a vision which recovers the value and role of truth and of memory in social and human life:

The truth is an inescapable fundamental in order to over-come impunity for crimes against humanity, and for the full realisation of the rights to justice and complete legal reparations. For the victims’ movement coming to terms with what has happened is not a process that is carried out in secret and in intimacy with those affected by vio-lence. Truth and historic memory are part of a process of democratisation of society and an opportunity for social forces that have been excluded, persecuted and stigma-tised to participate in public life (Movice 2006).

Its strength is in the judgment of concrete facts, that prevents death and barbarity from being forgotten and hidden, as the band of thieves would like them to be, in order that they might be able to continue shaping Colombian society: “the movement reiterates its com-mitment to pursue the agrarian mandate (which implies) gathering information about the goods, lands and ter-ritories of the victims, which were usurped by the policy of state terrorism”; “the victims’ movement demands the sanctioning of the most responsible for more than 50,000 crimes against humanity”.

In conclusion, we have in this country determination, and social actors who affirm life, that might be a base for an alternative ethics in which human rights were possible. They show themselves as fragments that are sufficiently significant to strengthen dynamics of recognition and to in-stall ideas and images capable of taking hold in the human interior, and subjectively configuring those who participate in Colombia’s social life. In other words, we are speaking of a process with the potential to universalise an ethics of the living subject. It is a question of persevering, and of his-toric patience. It is a question of human sensibleness. It is a question of joining together in this endeavour.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lAngarita, Carlos et al (2000), “Plan Colombia, Doc-• trina de Seguridad Nacional y Regehemonización gringa” (“Plan Colombia, National Security Doctrine and Gringo Rehegemonisation”), in Mirar Colombia magazine No 4, Santa Fe de Bogotá.

__________ (2002). “Debate Electoral 2002: Pugna • entre el antiterrorismo radical y una emergente alternativa democrática” (“Electoral Debate 2002: the Struggle Between Radical Anti-Terrorism and an Emergent Democratic Alternative”), in Mirar Colom-bia magazine No 6, Santa Fe de Bogotá.

Angarita, Carlos E (2003), “Nueva Cristiandad, paz • y autoridad” (New Christianity, Peace and Author-ity”), in Le Monde Diplomatique, el Dipló, Year I, No.11, Bogotá.

elespectador.com (2009), “La encrucijada del alma” • (“The Crossroads of the Soul”), available at: www.elespectador.com/impreso/politica/articuloimpre-so142202-encrucijada-del-alma

Hinkelammert, Franz (1998), “El grito del sujeto. Del • teatro-mundo del Evangelio de Juan al perro-mundo de la globalización” (“The Shout of the Subject: From the Theatre-World of Evandelia de Juan to the Dog-World of Globalisation”), Ecumenical Department of Investigations, San José de Costa Rica.

_________________ (2001), “Fundamentos de la • ética, conversaciones con Enrique Dussel” (“Fun-damentals of Ethics, Conversations with Enrique Dussel”), in Gutiérrez, Germán and Duque, José (eds.), “Itinerarios de la razón critica” (“Itineraries of Critical Reason”), Ecumenical Department of In-vestigations, San José de Costa Rica.

_________________ (2005) “Prometeo, el dis-• cernimiento de los dioses y la ética del sujeto. Reflexiones a partir de un libro” (“Prometheus, the Discernment of the Gods and the Ethics of the Sub-ject. Reflections from a Book”), in Pasos magazine No. 118, Ecumenical Department of Investigations, San José de Costa Rica.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lMaestre, Daniel (2008), “Así se viene tejiendo la • Minga nacional indígena 36 días después” (“Thus the National Indigenous ‘Minga’ is Building 36 Days Later”), available at: http://www.viva.org.co/cajavir-tual/svc0136/index.htm

Movice, “Declaración Final - III Encuentro Nacional • de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado. Ocho propues-tas para la verdad, la justicia, la reparación inte-gral, la memoria y la no repetición de los crímenes contra la humanidad” (Final Declaration – III Na-tional Meeting of the Victims of State Crimes. Eight Proposals for Truth, Justice and Complete Repara-tion, Memory and Non-Repetition of Crimes Against Humanity”) (2006), available at: http://www.movi-mientodevictimas.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=56

Nasa-Acin, “Mandato Indígena y Popular de la • Minga por la Vida, la Justicia, la Alegría, la Libertad y la Autonomía” (“The Indigenous and Popular Man-date for Life, Justice, Happiness, Liberty and Au-tonomy”) (2009), available at: http://www.nasaacin.org/mandato_indigena_popular.htm

Ovejero, Félix (1994), “Mercado, ética y economía” • (“Market, Ethics and Economy”), Icaria-Fuhem, Barcelona.

SP-Noticias (2009), “Palabras del Presidente Álvaro • Uribe Vélez, durante la ceremonia de instalación del Congreso de la República “ (“The Words of President Álvaro Uribe During the Ceremony of Inauguration of the Congress of the Republic”), available at: http://web.presidencia.gov.co/sp/2009/julio/20/15202009.html

Internet

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“They have money and they want more”: Uribe’s brothers and the land of MosqueraSandra Yanneth García Herrera*

The Madrid link-road, a road that was built not more than 10 years ago, has meant the possibility, for some inhabitants living in the si-erra to the west of Bogotá, of getting to their jobs in the capital more quickly. But the construction doesn’t stop and, to the side of this motorway one can now see new works, more cement, more walls and, of course, less cows and crops. The river is smaller and more contaminated, while the few birds and green spaces that remain are slowly absorbed by the grey and the artificial colours of the huge warehouses that are springing up.

On one of these daily commutes from the outskirts to the capital, I was accompanied by Hugo, a friend of many years who knows the region well. Looking out at the new infrastructure springing up over the course of the journey, he recalls his youth in the 1970s when he studied at Salesiano school in Mosquera: “I remember we used to go to play football at some huge fields that were there, and we used to go walk-ing and find beautiful places and we would go and play in the wetlands where there was such a huge range of greens, along with the beautiful songs of the birds and the sound of the wings of the insects.”

Mosquera is now seen as a strategically important area for large businesses and transnational projects, thanks to its position at the meeting point of the various routes that crisscross the sierra, from east to west, and north to south. Located 23 kilometers from the capital city, its lands have today become the target of business en-

terprises belonging to national personalities, such as the family of Pres-ident Uribe, and of regional figures, such as the family of former Mayor of Mosquera, Álvaro Rozo.

The municipal councillor of Mosquera, Ivonnet Tapiago, has been carrying out an investigation into the issue, and tells of how, after the purchase of lands of “San Laureano and El Paraíso”, which are found on the link-road between Mosquera and Madrid, “a series of actions unfolded, through administrative, municipal and national acts, which undoubtedly benefitted the interests of brothers Tomás and Jerónimo Uribe” (Tapia 2009: 2). This business has been gestating since 2006, when the Uribe brothers created a business called Residuos Ecoeficien-cia (Ecoefficiency Waste), intended, according to its webpage, to con-tribute to the wellbeing of the planet. However, in reality what they did with this business was to remove the only possibility of generating any economic income, for their daily sustenance, from many people, as has been well expressed by “el indio” (the Indian), a young rapper who lives on the periphery of the region in one of his songs:

“Listen Mr President, it doesn’t bother you that just metres from your palace there are people facing dilemmas in great extreme poverty. The partners of the street who search through shit, who go through the shit that comes from your house, it really doesn’t bother you that your pretty sons take away our jobs. They already have so much money, they leave the neighbourhood so low, they have money and they want more, they want to swallow everything. How many lives are necessary? How many deaths must be counted? Life here is terrible, they spit in our faces, and you want me not to be of-fended. The search is taken away, the recycling is stolen, don’t cheat codebtor”

In the same vein, Ivonnet likewise explains: “The factories that are there, like in Purina that used to give rubbish to the recyclers of the area, very poor families, now delivers it all to Ecoeficiencia.”

In just two years, their earnings multiplied and they were doing busi-ness internationally: “Residuos Ecoeficiencia is the Uribe brothers’ firm dedicated to the recycling business, and which has gradually developed leaving small recyclers out of work. This business is located in the mu-nicipality of Mosquera, adjacent to the tax-free zone” (Tapia 2009: 1).

The lands that Ivonnet speaks or were bought from Bavaria S.A. by Fiduciaria Colpatria through the F-C plots Mosquera which represents Residuos Ecoeficiencia. Fourteen days after the acquisition of the plots, on 19 December 2006, with Álvaro Rozo being mayor, Agreement 020 of the Basic Plan of Territorial Ordering (BPTO) of Mosquera saw to it that these lands passed from being classified as rural to being classified as * Corporación Cactus.

INDEX

70 “They have money and they want more” 71Break the spell or more of the same?

grounds of urban expansion, thereby making their value go up. As was condemned by Daniel Coronell in one of his columns in the magazine Semana, this political favour did not come free. The former civil servant managed to accede to part of these lands with the firm ALC, which belongs to his family. “This is what is known as the ‘traffic of influence’, in which businesspersons use the power of family members in bureau-cratic positions to make the laws more conducive to their pockets,” says Hugo, indicating his point of view concerning what has happened with these plots of land.

As has been explained by Ivonnet, according to the regulations con-cerning zones for construction there is an occupation index which al-lows only for construction on half of the land, as the rest of the space has to be left for green zones, aqueducts and sewage installations, among others. But eight months after the modification of the BPTO, the same mayor issued a new decree, Decree 116, in which the allow-ance for construction was raised by 25% or more, thereby allowing for the sale of more plots. “And why the sale of plots?”, asks the concillor. “Well, it is because on 4 October 2007 that office issued Subdivision Resolution 0042 concerning the land of San Laureano, which allows for the parcelling and selling of plots, in which the land is no longer sold by hectares but instead by square metres, which multiplies the value of the land,” she explains.

This business still continues, Ivonnet said as she looked over a press article she herself wrote. These plots were going to be converted into a tax-free zone, a move for which, according to the law, a “Master Plan of General Development” had to be drawn up and presented to the Intersec-toral Commission of Tax-Free Zones, and later approved by DIAN in De-cember 2008. “This determined that some plots that were aquired in 2006 for 8.6 billion pesos, and which had not been regulated with regard to their development, revalued dramatically and then became a tax-free zone, en-joying all the corresponding benefits from the state.” (Tapia 2009).

A few years before, in 2005, under the mandate of President Uribe, the law that regulates tax-free zones in the country was reformed, permitting reductions and exemptions in the payment of taxes. While showing me photographs in the bulletins published by the Mosquera mayor’s office and newspaper articles, Ivonnet describes the great em-pathy that exists between former mayor Rozo, the President and his ministers, former governor André González, the Mayor of Facatativá, Oscar Sánches, and Tomás, Uribe’s elder son, as they are pictured at

various events and political sessions reaching out their hands, signing agreements, celebrating the creation of the Western Tax-Free Zone, and smiling for the cameras.

“And how are the formal complaints regarding this issue going?”, I asked Ivonet, who, with an air of frustration, told me that as a councillor she presented a proposition on June 3 to initiate all of the correspond-ing proceedings to the Agustín Codazzi Geographic Institute, as a means to clarify the real value that should be received by the municipality for capital gains generated on the San Laureano and El Paraíso lands. Ac-cording to the law, the municipality should receive some share of the earnings generated by the exploitation of a plot of land, and from the earnings derived from the territorial reordering or public investments carried out in the name of general interest by the territorial adminis-tration. But, Ivonnet tells me, asides from being mistreated and stig-matised for opposing the supposed progress, and despite the fact the people “could receive income from the sources of employment gener-ated by the tax-free zone”, the local government declined the proposi-tion. “What more could we expect, if the majority of councillors and the former mayor are ‘uribistas’?” she asks. “What the people don’t know, says Ivonnet, is that with that capital gains money that the municipality should be paid, further social investment could be made, which would surely offer more and better opportunities for work, health and educa-tion, but at the moment we suffer from short-sightedness and we only think of the day-to-day”.

After speaking with Ivonnet, I left for my home in Facatativá. When the bus turned onto the Madrid link-road I felt nauseous as I looked at the plots already classified as green zones and I remembered the look on Ivonnet’s face as she felt her impotence before the great economic, political and military power of the large businesspeople, who can be-have so shamelessly, taking work from people in order to continue ac-cumulating wealth, and yet still “wanting more” as El Indio lamented.

g r a p h y B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b l i o g r a p h y B

Tapia, Ivonnet (2009). “Qué está pasando en Mosquera” (“What is Happening • in Mosquera”). Unpublished. Mosquera – Cundinamarca

Coronell, Daniel (2009). “Sobrados de Lote” (“Plot Excesses”), in • Semana

magazine, Saturday 18 April 2009.


Concealment techniques: new tendencies in extrajudicial executions in Colombia Mesa de Trabajo sobre Ejecuciones Extrajudiciales Coordinación Colombia - Europa - Estados Unidos

“Parapolitics”, a phenomenon which refuses to disappear León Valencia, Oscar Fernando Sevillano

Extradition and other mechanisms of impunity: monitoring the “Justice and Peace Law” Colectivo de abogados José Alvear Restrepo It is dangerous to think differently or show dissent for governmental policies (Chronicle) Hollman Morris

“Our sons are innocent workers, not delinquents or guerrillas” (Chronicle) Nicolás Murillo Faucher

75

93

109

116

120

(Democratic Securitas)“To wiretap journalists dial #1,

for politicians dial #2, for other citizens dial #3”

INDEX


Concealment techniques: new tendencies in extrajudicial executions in ColombiaAlberto Yepes*

The recent evolution of extrajudicial killings in Colombia.

The situation of human rights and humanitarian law in Colombia remains serious. In the period from July 2007 to June 2008 at least 1,492 people were registered as having lost their lives in non-combat situations as a result of sociopolitical violence.1 Of these, 182 were forcibly disappeared. In those cases in which the generic author of the violations is known (923 victims), 82.1% of cases were attributed to the state, 32.06% through direct perpetration by agents of the state (296 victims); and by tolerance or support of violations committed by paramilitaries, some 49.94% (461 victims). Attribution to the guerrillas accounted for 17.98% (166 victims).2 The Roundtable on Extrajudicial Killings of Coordinación Colombia-Eu-ropa-Estados Unidos reported 535 cases of extrajudicial executions di-rectly attributable to the state security forces between 1 January 2007 and 30 June 2008, that is to say, one case per day.

The existence of a prolonged and serious armed conflict, which is persistently denied by the current government, and before which there are no policies of negotiation nor commitments to implement humanitar-ian agreements safeguarding the rights of the civil population, worsens the situation of sociopolitical violence. Against this backdrop, violations of the right to life have reached levels that are intolerable in any demo-cratic society. In this context, the murder of people outside combat com-mitted by public forces, either directly or through tolerance, with the participation or complicity of paramilitary groups, constitutes one of the gravest problems with regard to human rights, and a challenge that is still awaiting remedies in the policies, measures, practices and conduct with

1 In the same period, 1007 people died in combat.

2 Colombian Commission of Jurists. Human Rights Crisis and Democracy at Risk in Colombia 2009. Mimeo. Bogotá. 1 October 2009.

* Coordinación Colombia-Europa-Estados Unidos, Roundtable on Extrajudicial Executions

INDEX

7676 Concealment techniques: new tendencies in extrajudicial executions in Colombia 77Break the spell or more of the same? 77

which state forces relate to the population in the exer-cise of their constitutional functions.

However, in the face of the systematic and generalised dynamic of extrajudicial killings attributed to the state security forces, which continues to enjoy impunity in the immense majority of cases, the national government has opted to minimise the cases or deny their existence. Pres-ident Uribe recently declared, despite all evidence, that “there are only 22 confirmed cases” of false positives and that “the state forces will not develop a complex because of dozens of false accusations”. For President Uribe the complaints over these grave violations of human rights are made because “many people, sheltered under the is-sue of ‘false positives’, have made the false accusations grow, in an attempt to paralyse the public forces in their efforts against the terrorists”.3 However, the Attorney General has in its hands 1,009 cases, which correspond to 1,666 victims, of which 1,507 are men; 108 are women and 51 are minors.4 On the other hand, the well-known disappearance and later execution in the municipality of Ocaña and coming, in the majority, from the marginalised neighbourhoods of Soacha and the south of Bogotá, led to 27 National Army officers being relieved of duty and the resignation of the General Commander of the Army, along with the enactment of measures that have led the Colombia government to say the problem of extrajudicial killings is an issue that has been dealt with. The Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos has said that what exists is “a perverse interest in inflating the figures” and that “the enemies of President Uribe, the policy of democratic security and the public forces, turn to this practice”.5.

3 “Uribe dice que solo existen comprobados 22 casos de ‘falsos positivos’” (“Uribe says that only 22 proved cases of ‘false positives’ exist”). Caracol Radio. 23 March 2009. http://www.caracol.com.co/nota.aspx?id=782914

4 “Fiscalía investiga más de mil casos de homicidios que involucran a militares” (“Attorney General investigates more than a thousand homicides involving military per-sonnel”). El Espectador, 30 April 2009. See: http://www.elespectador.com/falsos-positivos/articulo138578-fisca-lia-investiga-mas-de-mil-casos-de-homicidios-involucran-militar.

5 “Cifras sobre ‘falsos positivos’ han sido infladas, según Mindefensa” (“Figures on ‘false positives’ have been in-

According to Mr Santos, “since October of last year not a single case has been presented”.6 This affirmation is in-correct, given that, despite changes to modalities aimed at invisibilising extrajudicial killings, new reports have continued to surface, directly involving members of the seucrity forces. To mention just one case in which judi-cial organs themselves have refuted this affirmation, on 16 December 2008 Edwin Legarda, an activist from the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca, and husband of Aída Quilcué, leader of the indigenous Minga, was mur-dered. Edwin Legarda was slain in an Army ambush on the vehicle in which he was travelling by members of the José Hilario López Batallion of the Army’s III Brigade. In this case, a judge ordered preventive detention of the seven uniformed officers after a state attorney argued that the case was a “planed false positive, in which all the protocols established for the security forces, in order to protect the integrity of the citizenry, were violated”.7

However, one of the phenomena that the organi-sations making up the Roundtable of Extrajudicial Ex-ecutions have denounced is the scandal that erupted in October 2008 over the magnitude that the problem of extrajudicial killings had developed throughout the country (these were denounced initially because of the incidents in Ocaña – Soacha, but it soon came to light that there were reports of similar cases in a large number of regions). This has been accompanied by contradictory measures regarding the treatment of these criminal ac-tions, along with the appearance of new modalities in the

flated, according to Ministry of Defence”). In: El Espe-

ctador. 21 April 2009. See: http://www.caracoltv.com/noticias/politica/articulo136288-cifras-sobre-falsos-posi-tivos-han-sido-infladas-segun-mindefensa

6 National Army. “La esencia de la legitimidad de nuestras Fuerzas Armadas es el apego a la ley y el respeto abso-luto a los DDHH” (“The Essence of the Legitimacy of our Armed Forces is Adherence to the Law and Absolute Re-spect for Human Reights”). 22 April 2009. See: http://www.ejercito.mil.co/?idcategoria=222162

7 “Muerte de indígena en Cauca fue un ‘falso positivo’, ase-gura la Fiscalía” (“Death of indigenous person in Cauca was a ‘false positive’ says Public Attorney”). El Tiempo. 2 May 2009. See: http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/jus-ticia/muerte-de-indigena-en-cauca-fue-un-falso-positivo-asegura-la-fiscalia_5114327-1

commission of extrajudicial killings that have sought to adapt to the new directives and criteria emanating from the Ministry of Defense. These measures seek to give the sensation that the demand for an end to executions is being complied with, while also continuing the same practices, save for making greater effort to ensure the new executions are not reported (publicly) and that the cadavers are diligently hidden in order to prevent traces of responsibility that might lead to the authors of these illegal acts. As an example of this, on 2 April Monsignor Francisco Antonio Nieto, Auxiliary Bishop of Bolívar City, reported on Caracol TV News that the bodies of 11 youths murdered in the city had been hidden by people who arrived in trucks to remove them.

Among the contradictory measures that should be mentioned are the enactment of directives that publicly order the security forces to avoid homicides, but which work side-by-side with directives which, secretly, offer economic remuneration for the presentation of persons reported as killed in combat. This means to say that, in the face of extrajudicial executions, there exists an am-biguous dual structure of sanctions and benefits that, while publicly announcing sanctions against such acts, also secretly offers rewards to those who commit them.

As a consequence, what has been observed in many regions is that privation of the right to life of social lead-ers, opposition politicians and members of social organi-sations and vulnerable sectors, has been promoted as a priority through forced disappearance – as a means to conceal extrajudicial executions – and through the resumption of extrajudicial executions with indirect re-sponsibility through the commission of the same by paramilitaries that act with the complicity or acquies-cence of the security forces. In the majority of these cases, the forced disappearances have as their end ex-trajudicial execution. The only change is that, in recent months, provisions have been made to ensure that when these extrajudicial executions take place they are not re-ported (publicly, at least) as “positives” of war and that traces of the bodies are not left behind. This modality has been demonstrated in the detention, disappearance and execution of the union leader Guillermo Rivera, of the Comptroller’s Union, who was arrested by the secu-rity forces in Bogotá on 22 April 2008 and buried, after his anonymous disappearance in the city of Ibagué. Nei-

ther his detention nor his execution was reported as a “positive” of democratic security, leaving him a case of forced disappearance until his body was discovered with signs of torture on 16 June 2008. That is to say, although the strategy of making extrajudicial executions appear as forced disappearances seems to have been employed more frequently since the announcement of “zero toler-ance” towards extrajudicial killings, it is a modality that has been used since long before.

Thus, the zero tolerance measures targetted at false positives have been accompanied by a worrying rise in the numbers of forced disappearances. According to a recent report of the National Commission of the Search for Disappeared Persons, solely between 1 January 2007 and 21 October 2008, a total of 1,686 forced disappear-ances have taken place, the majority of them related to extrajudicial killings.8 The participation of members of the security forces in diverse cases of forced disappearance has been duly documented in a worrying number of recent cases. Two of the most worrying cases of this recent up-surge coincide with two of the localities with the greatest military presence in the country – the municipality of La Macarena, Meta (Centre of Strategic Operations of Plan Colombia, where the Centre for Integral Fusion of the Army functions). This is also where, according to reports, mass graves have also been found which could contain the remains of 1,150 disappeared persons. The second location is the municipality of Buenaventura (one of the most militarised areas of the Pacific region, and principal point of departure for the Colombian exports foreseen by various commercial agreements), where the Municipal Representative has received reports of 373 forced disap-pearances in the last three years, according to reports made in the Communal Council staged on 21 February.

There is also concern that diverse cases of political-ly-motivated murders are proliferating and that violence against social leaders and the socially marginalised have been presented as “confused cases”, in which it is sought

8 “7.763 desapariciones fueron reportadas en los dos úl-timos años” (“7,763 disappearances were reported in the last two years”).In Cambio magazine, 22 October 2008. See: http://www.cambio.com.co/paiscambio/799/ARTICULO-PRINTER_FRIENDLY-PRINTER_FRIENDLY_CAMBIO-4618959.html


to separate responsibility from the perpetrators, from their motives and the circumstances in which they take place. Behind this, it is possible that new cases of ex-trajudicial executions are being concealed. One example of this is the murder of five members of the Kankuamos community on 31 December 2008, and the evermore frequent murder of union activists using blades or oth-er sharp instruments, as was the case of Adolfo Tique (stabbed to death on 1 January 2009) and four other union members in similar circumstances over the course of 2008. Leaders of the organisation Asoproa, in the west of Antioquia, have also been murdered in “confusing cir-cumstances” in recent months.

The rise in activities of paramilitary groups in the country’s major cities, and the proliferation of threats against young people, social leaders and the socially marginalised, has led to the murder of dozens of youths in more than 20 cities. This seems to be part of a new escalation in paramilitary action which seeks to relegiti-mise their presence, as they assume functions of social control that correspond to the security forces, execut-ing hundreds of marginalised youths and victims of the sharpening economic crisis, through acts of “social cleansing”. This transfer of social control functions in large areas of the national territory may explain, in part, the shift in responsibility for extrajudicial executions that was observed in the last Special Report on False Posi-tives, drafted by Cinep. This document emphasises that, while the number of victims of extrajudicial executions attributed to the National Army diminished from 298 to 165 between 2007 and 2008, the number of victims of extrajudicial executions committed by paramilitaries rose from 267 to 372.9

On 4 May 2009, during the human rights account-ability report at Casa de Nariño, President Uribe, accord-ing to the media, “balanced the false reports which have been made and gave assurances that they stemmed from a campaign to discredit the security forces and the dem-ocratic security policy”. According to President Uribe, “there are unscrupulous people who aim with these false reports to delegitimise the democratic security

9 Cinep. “Falsos Positivos. Balance del Segundo Semestre de 2008” (“False Positives: Balance of the Second Se-mester of 2008”). Special Report April 2009. Pag. 15

policy”,10 and, in so doing, “they also seek to judicialise the claims which only aim”, he said, “to sully the image of the government”.11 The Minister of Defense likewise expressed, at this same event, that “according to intel-ligence information it has come to be known that there are people who want to stain the name of the security forces, making false accusations, for which specific cases are be-ing investigated in order to seek judicial solutions”.

It is worrying that a government that has repeatedly tackled the issue of extrajudicial executions by denying the facts, with the argument that the problem is one of “false claims”, now threatens to take judicial action against those who denounce these crimes. Given that, according to President Uribe, “of the cases denounced as ‘false positives’, in only 22 of them has juridical support been found”12 and the rest are simply false complaints, with which “it is sought to paralyse the action of the se-curity forces, raising false accusations against them”, it is evident that there is now a desire to conceal the occur-rence of extrajudicial killings by using the threat of judi-cial action to impede the reporting of these executions. In a situation of structural impunity, in which, according to a report recently presented to the European Union, the possibility of a homicide being punished by the Co-lombian justice system is only 7%.13 It is worrying that

10 “Joven de Montería es el nuevo caso de falso positivo revelado por el ministro de Defensa” (“Montería youth is the new false positive case revealed by the Minister for Defence”). El Tiempo.com. 4 May 2009. See: http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/justicia/joven-de-monteria-es-el-nuevo-caso-de-falso-positivo-revelado-por-el-minis-tro-de-defensa_5129447-1

11 “Gobierno admite una muerte extrajudicial por parte del Ejército” (“Government admits an extrajudicial death by the Army”). Caracol TV. 4 May 2009. See: http://www.caracoltv.com/noticias/justicia/articulo137691-gobierno-admite-una-muerte-extrajudicial-parte-del-ejercito

12 “Uribe dice que muchos ‘falsos positivos’ son ‘falsas acusaciones’” (“Uribe says many ‘false positives’ are ‘false accusations’”). El Espectador. 23 March 2009. See: http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/articulo130043-uribe-dice-muchos-falsos-positivos-son-falsas-acusaciones

13 “De 7% es la posibilidad de que un homicida sea casti-

the vast majority of extrajudicial executions, which re-main in impunity, and with regard to which the apparatus of justice has not been capable of establishing the judi-cial truth, are classified as “false accusations” and those who report them are denounced. In this way, it may be possible for the registration of extrajudicial executions or forced disappearances to be reduced because of vic-tims’ families fear of being imprisoned for having had the nerve to report the facts of how their loved ones died.

The seriousness of the extrajudicial executions situation

The alarming frequency of murders of civilians at the hands of the security forces, committed outside of armed confrontations, and its persistent rise in recent years, is depriving hundreds of people from their right to life, and constitutes a major cause for concern for both the national and international communities. The report of the Universal Periodic Examination of Human Rights and Peace Platforms recently disclosed that

“over the last five years there has been a rise of 67.71% in the registered number of extrajudicial executions directly attributed to the public security forces, a lapse which co-incides with the application of the ‘democratic security’ policy” promoted by the current government since its in-stallation on 7 August 2002. Thus, between July 2002 and December 2007, at least 1,122 cases of extrajudicial killings directly attributable to the public forces have be registered, as compared to 669 cases recorded between January 1997 and June 2002”.14

With the aim of confronting this terrible and dramatic situation, the military authorities and the Ministry of De-fense have taken a series of political decisions and mea-sures which, it is understood, seek to address the reality of extrajudicial killings, among which is the elimination of the decree on economic bonuses in this regard15; the

gado por la justicia en Colombia, dice la UE” (“There is a 7% chance of a homicide being punished by Colombian justice, says the EU”). El Tiempo.com. 5 April 2009. See: http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/justicia/de-7-es-la-posibilidad-de-que-un-homicida-sea-castigado-por-la-justicia-en-colombia-dice-la-ue_4951148-1

14 Ibid. Pag. 4

15 Decree 1400 of 2006 established economic recom-

emphatic prohibition of murder of protected persons16; the prioritisation of the capture and demobilisation of guerrillas rather than their physical elimination17; the re-ferral of cases with the characteristics of murder of civil-ians to ordinary justice18 and a further series of measures which were expected to be effective in addressing these atrocities.

With regard to the efficacy of these measures, the Minister of Defense stated in September 2008 that there had been “an important reduction in cases” of extrajudi-cial executions, according to which, up until September 2008 there had only been 25 cases.19 Afterwards it came to be known that solely in Soacha and Ciudad Bolívar at least 23 youths had been murdered. They had been killed in early 2008 and buried in mass graves after being attracted with offers of work only to be disappeared and reported one or two days later as combat deaths. The facts of Soacha led to reports of a series of similar events at the national level, none of which had previously been reported (in Engativá, Toluviejo, Montería, Risaralda, Me-dellín, Neiva, Barranquilla, Valledupar and other places),

pense for what was called “operations of national in-

terst”, which caused alarm and opposition in various

sectors, thereby leading to its rapid derogation through

Decree 1664 of 2007. However, a secret decree for the

payment of bonusses for captures or losses, which es-

tablishes quotas according to military units and a list of

prices for the casualties presented, has been imposed

on Colombian society: Secret Directive 029 of 2009,

the validity of which was recently defended by both the

President of the Republic and his military chiefs. All of

these norms were issued by the ex-Minister of Defence

Camilo Ospina, current Ambassador to the OAS.

16 Permanent Directive 10 June 2007, of the Ministry of

Defence.

17 Permanent Directive 300-28 November 2007 of the

General Command of Military Forces.

18 Permanent Directive 19 of November 2007, of the

Ministry of Defence.

19 Speech of the Minister for Defence Juan Manuel San-

tos, 9 Septembre 2007, in the Military Club. See:

http://www.mindefensa.gov.co/index.php?page=181&

id=7644&PHPSESSID=f70e0c537030a7203994d

7afb686431a


and which showed not only that this atrocious practice extended systematically at the national level, but also that new patterns and modalities had emerged that sought to conceal these crimes and keep them in silence with the aim of ensuring impunity for those responsible. The forced disappearance of socially marginalised youths and their displacement to distant regions, where they are then executed, has brought to light the existence of ma-cabre networks within the armed forces that are commit-ting these violations.

Despite the fact the government has persistently denied these reports and sought to discredit those who make them, international human rights organisations have warned about the seriousness of the situation. These have included the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, along with the United Nations. In its last report on the human rights situation in Colombia, the Office of the United Nations High Commission for Hu-man Rights recognised “the persistence of extrajudicial executions attributed to members of the security forces, fundamentally the army”20, further noting that “some common characteristics of the cases reported are the presentation of the victims as deaths in combat, alter-ing the scene of the crime prior to removing the body and, in the majority of cases, having military penal justice handle the investigations. The investigations carried out by the authorities into some of these cases reveal that they may have been motivated by the pressure for results and the interest of some members of the security forces in obtaining from said results a series of benefits and commendations”.21

In his visit to the country in June 2009, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Philip Alston expressed his concern over the incidence of so-called “false positives”, which he said were “bet-ter characterised a cold-blooded and premeditated murder of innocent civilians for the end of profit”. Even though he confirmed that the most publicised incidents were those of Soacha, he said that these “flagrant and

20 Report of the United Nations High Commission for Hu-man Rights on the Situation of Human Rights in Colom-bia. Human Rights Council. Seventh Period of Sessions. Document A/HRC/7/39. 28 February 2008. Pag. 15

21 Ibid. Pag. 17

obscene” massacres did not constitute a phenomenon that was limited either geographically or temporally, but instead were “simply the tip of the iceberg” as he could confirm that there were “similar massacres in the depart-ments of Antioquia, Arauca, Valle del Cauca, Casanare, Cesar, Córdoba, Huila, Meta, Norte de Santander, Putu-mayo, Santander, Sucre and Vichada”, in which “an im-portant quantity of military units were involved”.22

Contrary to the reiterated position of President Álva-ro Uribe, in the sense that extrajudicial killings have been presented as a few isolated cases, the Rapporteur for Ex-trajudicial Executions reported that “the explanation pre-ferred by many in the government – that the massacres were carried out on a small scale by a few “rotten apples” – is equally unsustainable. The quantities of these cases, their geographic distribution and the diversity of military units implicated, indicate that they were carried out in a more or less systematic manner, by a significant number of elements within the Army”.

Impunity for extrajudicial killings

Despite the significant number of investigations into pre-sumed extrajudicial executions attributed to the security forces being handled by the Attorney General, it is wor-rying that in the majority of these cases the perpetra-tors remain in impunity. A recent report by the Human Rights Unit of the Attorney General indicated that, up until April 2009, it had received 1,009 cases of homicides presumed to have been committed by members of the security forces, corresponding to a total of 1,666 victims. Of these cases, by April of this year only 83 members of the security forces had been convicted.23 But it must be underlined that these sentences were presented within the framework of Law 600 of 2000, from the old penal processing system. 232 cases are being processed under

22 Declaration of Professor, Philip Alston, Special Rappor-teur of the United Nations on Arbitary Executions. Mission to Colombia of 8 to 18 June 2009. Press release.

23 “Fiscalía investiga más de mil casos de homicidios que in-volucran a militares” (“Attorney Genereal investigates over a thousand cases of homicide involving military officers”). El Espectador. 30 April 2009. See: http://www.elespecta-dor.com/falsos-positivos/articulo138578-fiscalia-investi-ga-mas-de-mil-casos-de-homicidios-involucran-militar

the new Penal Accusatory System. The investigations that are being carried out by the Attorney General within the framework of this system (Law 906 of 2004) show that, to the month of December 2008, of the 231 cases pro-cessed in the new accusatory penal system, 229 were in the investigation stage and only two were in hearings.24 It becomes clear, then, that the New Accusatory Penal System is creating major failings which are allowing the advance of extrajudicial executions. The new system has very little capacity to produce truth and justice in cases concerning extrajudicial executions, an issue which must be analysed and revised exhaustively. Under this new sys-tem there have been no advances regarding impunity in cases of extrajudicial executions because, among other reasons, there are no preemptory periods established in order to expedite cases remaining in the preliminary stages for long periods. Furthermore, victims cannot ad-equately exercise their right to defense as they are not given access to documents and they cannot contravene the evidence thanks to this lack of access. Nor are they given access or the right to challenge the investigations carried out, the principal books of evidence, as has been the case with regard to the Soacha proceedings. Another factor contributing to impunity is found in the disciplinary proceedings held before the Comptroller General of the Nation: in the wake of the collapse of the unit processing cases, independent settlements have been assigned to each one, impeding access for victims’ representatives to the principal body of case law for much of the evidence.

The government, furthermore, has refused to repeal Directive 029 of 2005, which offers economic incentives for the presentation of persons reported as killed in com-bat. These recompenses are a prevalent factor in the con-tinuance of paid-for execution of civilians who are later presented a combat casualties. The government sustains that said policy of bonuses constitutes the heart of the democratic security policy. The government’s stance in this regard shows contempt for one of the recommendations made in the Universal Periodic Examination of 10 Decem-ber 2008 in the United Nations Human Rights Council.

24 “Respuesta de la Fiscalía General de la Nación a un Derecho de Petición de la Corporación Jurídica Libertad” (“Response of the Attorney General of the Nation to a right to petition from the Juridical Liberty Corporation”). December 2008.

In relation to the paradigmatic case of the Soacha youths, which is the case that has garnered greatest visibility and for which various state authorities prom-ised prompt justice and maximum sentences, it was recently reported that two retired coronels, two subof-ficials, and five professional soldiers were arrested for their presumed responsibility25, but many of the offi-cers dismissed for these crimes have not been brought to justice nor have charges been brought against them. In the hearing stages in Soacha on 21 April, the Director of the National Human Rights Unit of the Attorney Gen-eral’s Office, Sandra Castro, affirmed that the Attorney General has faced great difficulties in getting access to evidence and overcoming obstacles placed in the path of the investigation process by the security forces. This has included the destruction of relevant documentation. This seems to confirm that the concern expressed by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights Office in Colombia, when it said that “it is particularly serious and worrying that these murders may be being carried out through real criminal networks”26, is justified in that these structures seem to be intact in the interior of the security forces, constituting an enormous factor in impunity. While the architect of this policy, General Mario Montoya, who would have permanently ordered his troops that he wanted “stadia full of corpses”27 was named Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, the other implicated figures are likewise free. General José Joaquín Cortés, former commander of the II Division of the Army and one of three generals who were relieved of their duties, complained that “not all the 27 officers

25 “Dos coroneles retirados y otros siete militares capturados por los ‘falsos positivos’ de Soacha” (“Two retired colonels and another seven officers caught over the ‘false positives’ of Soacha”), Caracol Radio.com, Bogotá, 1 May 2009. http://www.caracol.com.co/nota.aspx?id=804639

26 UNHCHR. “The Colombian Office of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights calls for coordinated effort and leadership to clarify and put an end to the prac-tice of presumed extrajudicial executions”. See: http://www.hchr.org.co/publico/comunicados/2008/comunica-dos2008.php3?cod=21&cat=73

27 http://www.eltiempo.com/opinion/columnistas/saludh-ernndezmora/la-cultura-de-la-muerte_4639712-1


and sub-officers who are removed by the President really left the Army. There are some who are working, a major, captains and sergeants” (Interview with General Cortés, 2 March 2009, El Espectador28).

The UN Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial Execu-tions, Philip Alston, upon becoming aware of the mea-sures taken by the government to tackle the issue of extrajudicial executions, affirmed that these efforts were insufficient and ineffective in overcoming the impunity enveloping the vast majority of cases presented. Accord-ing to the Rapporteur: “The measures carried out demon-strate the effort of good faith deployed by the government to confront the killings of the past and prevent them happening in the future. Nonetheless, there continues a worrying breach between policy and practice. The num-ber of successful judgments remains very low”.29

Despite the Preliminary Report of the Mission, de-livered to verify the situation regarding extrajudicial executions in the country, the United Nations Special Rapporteur signalled his confidence in the encouraging governmental efforts to address the problem.

The same afternoon that the Special Rapporteur presented his report, the President of the Republic gave Congress the order to scupper the Legislative Project for Victims’ Reparation, for the simple reason that this proj-ect, despite being meticulously drawn up by Congress, contemplated the possibility of compensation for vic-tims of state crimes. These would have included the ex-trajudicial executions carried out by the security forces. Thus, while the rapporteur boarded a plane to return to his county, having publicly presented his report to the media, the President of the Republic turned his back on the victims of extrajudicial killings, and notified them that, as a result of their being victims of state crimes, they could not be treated in the same way as victims of other illegal actors, as the state did not have enough re-sources for them.

Instead, in the face of the requests made by families of victims of extrajudicial executions, the government has continuously insisted that what lies behind all this

28 http://www.elespectador.com/impreso/tema-del-dia/artic-uloimpreso123316-fuimos-carne-de-buitre\

29 Declaration of Profesor Philip Alston. Ibidem.

is a strategy of formulating “false reports” that the state will pursue and sanction in an exemplary manner, and that those who deserve solidarity are the members of the security forces involved. In this way, while the families of the victims of extrajudicial killings do not have access to resources or support to attend the hearings in the major cities, the state has created the Public Military Defender in order that the officers accused of these crimes finance their own defense with the charges being made to the na-tional budget. Meanwhile, the rest of the citizens rely on the public defender, at least theoretically, for those who live in extreme poverty. From the presidential affirma-tions to declarations that the reports are false, the words of new Minister of Defense Gabriel Silva, who told of-ficers not to worry about these complaints as they were part of the “juridical war” perpetrated by “enemies of the country”, have been followed.

Upon announcing the creation of a system of juridical defense for the members of the armed forces, the Minis-ter of Defense explained that “the necessary mechanisms to confront the juridical war against the military and po-lice are being developed”. Furthermore, in building the system of justice to address these “actions against the country”, he exclaimed that “no coronel should tremble, they should not be afraid of anything before the rules, no general should tremble and no soldier should worry about a complaint, as it is his will to fight against the juridical actions of the enemies of the country”30.

In a new affirmation that the cases of extrajudicial executions in Colombia constitute a massive and sys-tematic practice, the Attorney General of the Nation recently stated that, under the classification of murders known as “false positives”, a total of 2,077 Colombians, 59 of whom have been minors and 122 of whom have been women, have been murdered.31 However, the will

30 National Army. “Mindefensa anunció creación de sistema de defensa para la Fuerza Pública” (“Ministry of Defence announces creation of a system of defence for the public forces”). 12 August 2009. See: http://www.ejercito.mil.co/?idcategoria=230287

31 Más de dos mil colombianos habían sido asesinados

en falsos positivos, según informe de la Fiscalía (“More

than two thousand Colombians have been murdered in

false positives, according to Attorney General”). See:

for this immense mass of murders to remain in impunity can be regarded as a decision by the President of the Re-public, who wishes to install one of his former ministers of defense as the new Attorney General. This former min-ister was in office when the Ministerial Directive which established economic incentives for the production of corpses as a means to measure operational successes, was issued.

In a communication directed to the Supreme Court of Justice - which according to the constitution is the body which must select the Attorney General of the Na-tion from the shortlist presented by the President of the Republic – the country’s human rights organisations re-quested that the tribunal return the shortlist because, among other reasons, it did not meet the requirements suggested by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions in order that extrajudicial execu-tions not remain in impunity. The Special Rapporteur said “it is essential, given the central and key function of the Attorney General, that they be an independent, strong and reputable person”.32 In said communication, social organisations and NGOs grouped together under the banner of Coordinación Colombia–Europa–Estados Unidos (Colombia-Europe-United States Coordination) expressed their concern to the Supreme Court over the impunity in which cases of extrajudicial executions would remain with the installation as Attorney General of a per-son who previously impeded the investigation and pur-suit of these cases as he was responsible for the norms that caused their proliferation: in the CCEEU communi-cation it was stated that:

“It is also worrying that one of the candidates on the short-list, Camilo Ospina Bernal, has been the architect of a se-cret directive in the Ministry of Defense which established the payment of bonusses for casualties caused by officers. It was these economic benefits that stimulated the prolif-eration of the so-called ‘false positives’, which according to the report of the Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions would be better defined as ‘cold blooded and premeditated murder of innocent civilians for the end of profit’. It was

http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/justicia/mas-de-

dos-mil-colombianos-habian-sido-asesinados-en-fal-

sos-positivos-segun-informe-de-la-fiscalia_6378648-1

32 Declaration of Professor Philip Alston. Ibidem.

towards the end of 2008 when the scandal of extrajudicial executions was uncovered, and it came to be known that, behind these crimes was Secret Directive 029 of 2005, which was designed by Doctor Camilo Ospina Bernal while he was Minister of Defense, which he kept concealed for many years from both the national and international com-munities. The concealment of norms such as Directive 029 of 2005 which regulate military conducts which put the fundamental right to life of Colombians at risk. This is evi-dence of a dangerous antecedent, given that Doctor Ospina aspires to manage, from the Attorney General’s Office, an enormous discretionary power, with faculties to affect the basic liberties of the citizens and to pronounce on the re-sponsibility of the authors of more than 1,600 cases of extrajudicial executions which were produced in the devel-opment of procedures for which former minister Ospina is directly responsible”33.

That is to say, the measures against impunity con-tinuously announced by the authorities do not seem to have brought much justice to the victims of these crimes. If this is the paradigmatic case from which the govern-ment announced severe and exemplary measures, it is to be expected that the situation in no better in the other hundreds of cases, not to mention cases that remain anonymous, so it seems that truth, reparation and jus-tice will not in the end be imposed in the face of these crimes against humanity, despite the fact that this is what is necessary to finally put a definitive end to these de-plorable atrocities.

Extrajudicial executions in Colombia will therefore continue to be shrouded in impunity and will continue to be perpetrated through modalities which, it seems, aim to conceal these crimes.

New patterns in extrajudicial executions in Colombia

In October 2008 the Observation Mission on Extrajudi-cial Executions and Impunity in Colombia extensively

33 Coordinación Colombia – Europa – Estados Unidos. “Co-municación a la Corte Suprema de Justicia sobre el pro-ceso de Selección del Fiscal de la General de la Nación” (“Communication to the Supreme Court Regarding the Process of Selection of the Next Attorney General of the Nation”. 8 June 2009. See: http://www.pidhdd.org/con-tent/view/633/109/


described “a series of elements which indicate that in Colombia there exists a persistent pattern of systematic extrajudicial executions, along with impunity for these crimes”.34 In its final report, different patterns of action used for the realisation of extrajudicial executions, along with different patterns used to maintain impunity for these crimes, were detailled.

Both categories of patterns relate to the perpetration of extrajudicial killings and the maintenance of impunity. However, new patterns in the realisation of extrajudicial executions have started to register, or have reinforced previous patterns already employed in the past.

These new patterns are presumably related to two situations: (1) The scandals and reactions of rejection which have come from the national and international community in response to the so-called “false posi-tives”, in which and enormous number of people were counted as “positives”, enemy losses, in combat actions against the guerrillas, only to later be confirmed as civil-ians who were murdered outside of combat; and (2) The tactical adaptation of measures adopted by the Ministry of Defense with the aim of overcoming the widespread occurrence of extrajudicial executions which have been denounced. In the first case, the new patterns observed have sought to ensure extrajudicial executions are car-ried out in such a way that it is difficult to define them as “false positives” or to denounce them as such (not publicising combat deaths, executing the victims with shots from longer distances, burying them anonymously, in mass graves or outside of official cemeteries, thereby avoiding the presentation of witnesses or impeding po-tential witnesses from giving testimony etc.).

In the second case, the persistence of extrajudicial executions appears to be related to the existence of net-works within the armed forces, which have developed and put into practice strategies to defraud the directives which the Ministry of Defense has made public and ap-

34 Coordinación Colombia - Europa – Estados Unidos. “In-forme Final de la Misión Internacional de Observación sobre Ejecuciones Extrajudiciales e Impunidad en Colom-bia” (“Final Report of the International Observation Mis-sion on Extrajudicial Executions and Impunity in Colom-bia”). Thematic Document No. 4. October 2008. Pag. 9. See: http://www.ddhhcolombia.org.co/node/151

pears to be adhering to. In this way, they take advantage of a structure of incentives and sanctions that is clearly deficient and which reflects that fact that, as stated by the Minister of Defense, there are still military units and commands that persist in counting bodies as a means to measure operational results and thus attain positive evaluations. These evaluations are presumably related to benefits or privileges, which the civil authorities do not seem to control and citizen’s oversight systems are un-able to supervise.

The lack of reliable, easily accessible registers of per-sons presumed to have been killed in combat, the lack of rigorous and verifiable controls on the weapons presum-ably impounded - which leads to the situation where on occasions the same gun has been used to “legalise” vari-ous “casualties” - the poor state of facilities to exhume graves or bury victims in appropriate cemeteries, the lack of control on the use of reserve funds assigned to the tasks of security and the lack of public accountability in the application of compensatory funds, along with the impunity in which the vast majority of these cases re-main, constitutes a favourable structure of incentives for these patterns to continue.

Within these patterns, evidenced in the cases re-ported in various regions of the country in the wake of the case of the Soacha youths, new patterns have been detected: (1) The selection of victims from among the most marginalised sectors of various cities, especially from desperate youths, willing to accept offers of jobs involving “voluntary” transfer in exchange for diverse economic proposals (legal or illegal). (2) The transfer of victims to places where their execution will not provoke complaints from the local population and where, once executed, they cannot be recognised or claimed by any-body; (3) The presence of professional recruiters (some-times military officers or police, it has been reported) charged with attracting future victims; (4) The presenta-tion of the victims not as members of guerilla organisa-tions, but instead as extortionists, common criminals or members of “emergent criminal gangs”; (5) Persistence of uniformed personnel in carrying out the first diligences, inspection of the scene of the crime and removal of the bodies, and military penal jurisdiction in maintaining competence in the investigation. “Double precedents”, in which the investigation is apparently carried out by

the ordinary justice system, but it is also pursued simul-taneously through military penal jurisdiction, has also become commonplace. This often takes place in differ-ent cities, thereby impeding the right to defense and fa-cilitating impunity.

Added to this structure of perverse incentives, which allow the use of public funds (reserved funds, payments for compensation) in strategies which put the lives of citizens at risk, it must also be noted that ministerial di-rectives which seek to impart instructions averting the homicide of civilians by the security forces, and prioritise capture and demobilisation over deaths, were effectively annulled when President Uribe and his ministers publicly ordered rapid and efficient results, which came be inter-preted as giving permission for abuses and “positives” at any price.

Likewise providing incentives for extrajudicial killings, are the mistaken actions undertaken by the President, such as the order for a general to finish a criminal group which he compared to weeds. This order was made in the following terms: “That is like the weeds of acidic earth, it prospers. That weeds of criminality do not let the good prosper, and this is why it is necessary to complete this task fully… finish them and, on my account, don’t worry my general…”35. Similarly, the President’s public expres-

35 On 29 July 2008 President Uribe publicly ordered the Commander of the Fourth Brigade of the Army, General Juan Pablo Rodríguez, and the Commander of the Met-ropolitan Police of Valle de Aburrá, General Dagoberto García, to finish the criminals who persisted in the region of Envigado, who who compared with the weeds of ster-ile lands. “Rid us definitively of this nightmare, so that we can live peacefully and the new generations can grow with confidence, this is very important. It is like weeds in acidic land, it prospers. But these weeds don’t let the good prosper, and this is why it is necessary to complete this task fully”, he said, before adding: “There is nothing that attracts investment, Señor Generals, like the work that you are doing with these bandits that remain here. They says that the Office of Envigado, alias “El Yito”, still remains, that “El Memín” remains, that some of these bandits are still atound. Finish with them and, on my ac-count, don’t worry my general” See: “Uribe ordena elimi-nar la Oficina de Envigado” (“Uribe orders elimination of the Office of Envigado”),. El Espectador. 29 July 2008.

sion that “if he comes out… we’ll hit him hard” in oppo-sition to a meeting between the President of Venezuela and a guerilla chief with the aim of agreeing a possible humanitarian exchange, are indicative of the fact that, in the exercise of its duties, the security forces are not limited by a prohibition on killing, and instead the results of operations should be presented in terms of people killed and not by capture or demobilisation as suggested by the military command’s directives.36 The Minister of the Interior and Justice Carlos Holguín’s response to the death threats aimed at Senator Piedad Córdoba, in the sense that “she was looking for it” implied that violations of the right to life can be considered less serious if they are targetted at political opponents or those who do not share the government’s point of view.37

See: http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/artic-ulo-uribe-ordena-eliminar-oficina-de-envigado?page=2

36 On 13 November 2007 President Uribe responded to a proposal to arrange a meeting between Manuel Maru-landa, head of FARC, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, with a speech at the General Santander Cadet School in which he affirmed before the Marulanda toops “send reasons and say he cannot attend that meeting because if he emerged from that hiding place they’ll hit him hard”. Vid: “Uribe no avala encuentro entre Maru-landa y Chávez” (“Uribe does not back meeting between Marulanda and Chavez”). El País. 13 November 2007. See: http://www.elpais.com.co/paisonline/notas/Noviem-bre132007/marulanda.html

37 In early January the opposition Liberal Party senator suf-fered death threats because of her efforts as a mediator in the search for humanitarian solutions and mediation for the liberation of hostages being held by FARC guerrillas. When consulted on these threats the Minister of the In-terior and Justice at that time, Carlos Holguín Sardi, said that “the risks Piedad faces, she herself looked for” and that “it is evident that when a person expresses opinions like those of the Senator against the country and against the government, naturaly someone reacts to show their re-pudiation… the only person who has put her life at risk is her herself, noone else and it is not the government”. See: “Los riesgos de Piedad ella misma se los buscó, afirma el Gobierno” (“The risks Piedad faces she herself looked for, affirms the government”). Caracol. 24 January 2008. See: http://www.caracol.com.co/nota.aspx?id=538636


The new patterns in the commission, and the rein-forcement of mechanisms of impunity for the commis-sion of extrajudicial executions, make this a task that is yet to be addressed. In response, both national and in-ternational concern seems to be waking the conscience of the authorities and society to the fact that this is a problem to which a solution must be found immediately, once and for all, if we want to make the transition to a society in which the rule of law is reliable and capable of guaranteeing the liberties and rights that democracy demands, and in which citizens can have the security of knowing they are not going to be arbitrarily arrested and their right to life will not be denied, precisely by those who have the primordial obligation to protect it.

Some recommendations

The Final Report of the Observation Mission on Extra-judicial Executions and Impunity in Colombia made 34 recommendations to the government of Colombia (in the judicial process, technical-forensic, and executive power areas) and to the International Community, which are yet to be considered by the appropriate bodies.38 The fol-lowing recommendations only seek to complement the aforementioned catalogue of recommendations, and seek to offer proposals for action in the face of the new patterns in the realisation of extrajudicial killings ob-served and described in this report. These recommen-dations aim to reinforce the capacity for control of civil power over the actions of the security forces that are potential originators of human rights violations, while also offering mechanisms to confront deficiencies in the structure of benefits and sanctions in order to tackle these violatory behaviours.

Eliminate pressure on the military class in the sense • that successes with regard to security should be achieved at all costs and without any type of re-striction on operations, and substitute them with

38 Coordinación Colombia - Europa – Estados Unidos. “In-forme Final de la Misión Internacional de Observación sobre Ejecuciones Extrajudiciales e Impunidad en Co-lombia” (“Final Report of the International Observation Mission on Extrajudicial Executions and Impunity in Co-lombia”). Thematic Documents No. 4. October 2008. pp 62-70. See: http://www.ddhhcolombia.org.co/node/151

pressures orientated to positive results with regard to human rights (shift away from the rhetoric of “zero tolerance” concerning executions to effective measures to punish them when they occur)

Eliminate mistaken messages being sent to the • troops by senior government officials (such as the unfortunate order to the general to “finish them, and on my account, don’t worry my general” refer-ring to a criminal group; or the public declaration “if he comes out… we’ll hit him hard”, or the dec-larations of the Minister of the Interior Holguín re-garding the death threats made to Piedad Córdoba saying “she was looking for it”) as these references, made before public opinion, seem to legitimate pressures on troops for consistent results in the form of people killed, thereby weakening the effi-ciency of the ministerial directives expressed in the opposite direction.

Make public all secret norms issued by the Minis-• try of Defense regarding the incentivisation, ascent, recompense, bonuses or payment made to civilians or military personnel relating to the reporting of captures or losses, given that they put at risk the effectiveness of the right to life.

Clearly repeal Permanent Ministerial Directive 29 • of 2005 and all others that establish as criteria the incentivisation of killing, quotas of kills by military unit of the stipulation of the payment of civilians or military personnel for numbers killed, as all these leave unguaranteed the constitutional demand of prevalence of the right to life. Severe sanctions should also be established for those who profit or attain other benefits from such conduct.

Implement an adequate, reliable and consultable • register for families and for all those with a legiti-mate interest, so that all persons are reported if thought to be killed in combat.

Establish a centralised public system of registration • that allows the reporting prior to burial of persons killed violently who are to be buried in common or individual graves, with a report of their identity or anthropomorphic characteristics that allow for their identity to be established, along with the appropri-ate protocols.

Maintain an up-to-date, centralised and verifiable • register of weapons reported as decommissioned, thus avoiding the justification of killing with the ar-gument that the persons killed had weapons (when it is known that, on many occasions the weapons never appear, or that the same weapon has been used to legalise different deaths in different places)

Establish mechanisms for the supervision of the • delivery of benefits to military personnel who par-ticipate in operations in which combat casualties are reported.

Strict supervision by the Attorney General and other • competent entities on the application, distribution and use of compensation funds and reserved funds through a centralised list that it updated daily for the consultation of competent authorities.

An actualised register of all payments made to de-• mobilised and reinserted combatants for informa-tion that has allowed successful operations against illegal groups.

Establish an information system that allows cross-• referencing of the previous registers (reports of those presumed killed in combat, register of persons buried, or arms impounded, recompenses paid to military personnel, payments to reinserted and de-mobilised) with the Register of Persons Reported as Disappeared and the Single Register of Persons NN (unidentified).39 This could help prevent the lengthy delays in verifying the identities of persons who have been buried as “NN” and presumably reported as deaths in combat. As things stand, a great many of these victims are never identified and the crimes committed against them never come to light.

Strict prohibition of the security forces creating col-• lective graves or using cemeteries built on an ad-hoc basis to bury persons who have been, either confirmedly or presumably, killed in combat (estab-lish, with local authorities, centralised mechanisms of authorisation, along with proper registers and referencing systems for the sites where burials take

39 The acronym “N.N.” comes from the latin nomen nescio (literally “I dont know the name”). It is usually taken as meaning Name Unknown.

place, and that these should only happen when ab-solutely necessary)

Strict prohibition of the Anti-Disturbance Police us-• ing personnel with firearms in their crowd control activities. Severe sanctions corresponding to this prohibition and the use of firearms to attack social protests.

Prohibition of the security forces using non-conven-• tional weapons (rubber bullets, projectiles that dis-tribute shards, bombs or homemade weapons etc).

Modification of Directive 019 of 2007 in order that, • in all cases of military operations which involved the death of a person, the case automatically be referred to the ordinary justice system (that primary responsibility be defined). As things stand military commanders are not scrutinised with regard to whether deaths have the characteristics of homi-cide, or the homicide of persons in custody. The failure to make this distinction leads to the situation where all deaths are defined as “deaths in combat”, and accountability of military officers is impeded.

Redesign the System of Performance Evaluation • of the armed forces, with the participation of civil authorities, to address the lack of civil control of evaluation results that currently leads to violations of human rights being rewarded.

Redesign the structure of benefits and sanctions for • operational results in the security forces, impeding the discretionary and uncontrolled use of reserved funds, compensation funds, rewards in the form of time off, travel or transfer to privileged areas or postings, without the possibility of ensuring that these benefits do not correspond to actions carried out without consideration of human rights.

ANNEX

Some reported cases of extrajudicial executions that have taken place in the wake of the “zero tolerance” to false positives measures

On 8 December 2008 Joel Pérez Cárdena was shot, • decapitated and incinerated in the rural area be-tween San Vicente del Caguán and Puerto Rico


(Caqueá);: The human rights worker was one of the founders and first directors of the Corporation for the Defense of Human Rights ‘Caguán Vive’ and he held various posts in community and environmental organisations. The characteristics of the crime bear all the hallmarks, in the opinion of his community, of a state crime.40

On 16 December 2008 José Edwin Legarda Vásquez, • the husband of Senior Councillor Aída Quilcué Vi-vas, was murdered on the road to Totoró (Cauca) by Army troops. The vehicle in which he was travel-ling, which is normally used by the Councillor, was the target of 19 rifle rounds, some to the front of the vehicle, and a nurse from a medical mission who was accompanying the victim was wounded. The first version given by the soldiers affirmed that they had been shot at from the vehicle, but they later said that the vehicle disobeyed an order to stop. However, none of the other vehicles which were travelling through the area were called on to stop. Among the troops two unassigned rifles were discovered, and it is suspected that the intention was to “plant” these weapons on the victims. All indications suggest that the troops expected Aída Quilcué to be passing, as she was meant to travel the road at that time in order to attend a meeting of the Togoima Committee, but she had been delayed due to other commitments.41

On 26 December 2008 troops from the Infantry • Rifles Battalion of the 11th Brigade presented the body of Arnobis Negrete Villadiego as a member of the Don Mario criminal gang, killed by the army in the area of Villa Fátima in the municipality of Bue-navista (Córdoba). In reality, he was a student from the Colegio Cristóbal Colón de Montería, who had disappeared the previous day when another youth invited him to go with him when he was watering the front of his house in the neighbourhood of Ed-mundo López de Montería (Córdoba).42

40 Cinep. Database of Human Rights and Political Violence

41 Cinep. Database of Human Rights and Political Violence.


On 7 January 2009, María Concepción Rico was • killed by National Army troops in La Macarena (Meta). At the time she was in her house with her daughter Yéssika Rico and a neighbour called Se-bastián Gutiérrez, who were treated as guerrillas and told they should be grateful that they had not been killed too.43

On 9 January 2009, police officers in Bogotá extra-• judicially executed Robinson Gil, a homeless man who they killed with a single shot after having bru-tally beaten him with a baseball bat when the victim refused to remove the blanket he was wearing. The officers attempted to get rid of the body by hiding it in a rural area at kilometer 9 on the Choachí road, on the way out of Bogotá, where it was subsequent-ly discovered and reported by local residents.44

On 28 February, two uniformed officers on police • motorcycles detained 15-year-old Rodolfo Blandón, in Ciudad Bolívar (Bogotá) while he was accompa-nied by another friend who was a minor. After disap-pearing for a week, he was found dead due to a shot to the head in a field in Barrio Lucero Alto south of Bogotá.45

On 10 March 2009 in Barrio Montes in Barranquilla • (Atlantic), a minor called Miguel Andrés Martínez González (16) was executed by two members of the National Police, who murdered him with a shot to the head while he travelled with a friend who was also wounded. The police officers, who alleged that the two youths had committed a robbery, fled from the scene but other officers later arrived to take charge. The authorities subsequently confirmed that the two youths were not carrying weapons and


44 “Habitante de la calle murió a manos de 2 policías el 9 de enero; le dieron un tiro en la cabeza” (“Street dweller died at the hands of 2 police officers on 9 January; they shot him in the head”), El Tiempo.com. Bogotá, 9 January 2009. See: http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/bogota/habitante-de-la-calle-murio-a-manos-de-2-policias-el-9-de-enero-le-dieron-un-tiro-en-la-cabeza_4809833-1

45 See: http://www.elespectador.com/articulo125738-dos-policias-habrian-matado-un-joven-de-15-anos

did not have any criminal antecedents, nor did they have the stolen items for which they were, suppos-edly, being pursued.46

On 14 March 2009, in the municipality of La Mac-• arena (Meta), Luis Arbey Rubiano was extrajudicially executed by members of the No. I Mobile Brigade, attached to the National Army. The victim was work-ing as President of the El Tapir Community Action Committee, located in the municipality of La Mac-arena (Meta). When the incident took place the vic-tim was leaving his residence with his son, Rolando Martínez Plaza, who, after acting as a witness to the murder of his father, was detained arbitrarily by the National Army and held for two days.47

On 22 April 2009 in San Pablo (South of Bolívar) • Edgar Martínez, a member of the Agromineral Fed-eration of South Bolívar, was murdered. Edgar was attacked by unknown persons in a place known as “el cuatro” who shot him just minutes away from a National Police checkpoint as he travelled to his home in the El Retorno area on a motorcycle. Edgar had been, since the previous day (21 April 2009) in the centre of San Pablo and he was intending to travel to Monterrey when he was stopped by mem-bers of the National Police would not allow him to do so, saying that travel to the area was prohibited because a number of police officers had been killed. Later on Edgar again tried to leave for his home, but on this occasion police at the same checkpoint told him he could not as it was too late.48

46 “Mi hijo no era ningún delincuente” (“My son was no criminal”). El Heraldo, 12 March 2009. http://www.elheraldo.com.co/ELHERALDO/BancoConocimiento/X/x4mi_hijo_no_era_ningun_delincuente/x4mi_hijo_no_era_ningun_delincuente.asp?CodSeccion=29

47 Public complaint made by the El Tapir Community Action Committee, the Environmental Campesino Association of the Lozada Guayabero Rivers and the Environmental Campesino Association of the Tinigua and Macarena Na-tional Parks, La Macarena (Meta), 24 March 2009.

48 Fedeagromisbol and other social organisations. Public Complaint, Bogotá, 22 April 2009. http://fedeagromis-bol.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=

On 24 May 2009, at kilometer 80 of the road to • Tumaco in the Guayacana sector of Nariño, the indigenous leader Gonzalo Rodríguez Guanga was killed during a confused Army operation. The offi-cial information indicates that the victim had been arrested by troops for belonging to the guerillas. Once arrested and after hearing his rights, the vic-tim attempted to flee and was killed by the soldiers. The activist’s wife, who was accompanying him, says that after hearing the shot, the soldiers told her it was a stray bullet.49 Five months later, on 26 August 2009, Sixta Tulia García, the only witness to the murder of her husband, was murdered along with six other indigenous persons in the town of Awá. According to the report, at 5am, a group of hooded men, who wore military garb, arrived at the indigenous reserve of El Gran Rosario, in Tumaca (Nariño) and killed Tulia, along with five boys, one girl, and four other adults.50

On 3 July 2009, three youths leaving Cali (Valle del • Cauca), to look for work were reported as killed in combat in Puracé (Cauca). According to the report, the families of the victims learned of their deaths after a media outlet stated that the 29th Brigade of the Army had killed three guerrillas. According to Carlos Eduardo Mora, Senior Chief of the 29th Brigade, after preliminary investigations, these men died in an exchange of fire.51

60&Itemid=1

49 “Piden investigar muerte de indígena Awá en confuso operativo militar” (“Request for investigation into death of Awá indigenous in confused military operation”), CMI.com, Bogotá, 26 May 2009. See: http://www.cmi.com.co/?ir=videos&Versec=198&nota=29451

50 National Authority of Indigenous Government (Onic), “Nueva masacre contra el pueblo awa: crónica de un etnocidio” (“New massacre against the Awa people: chronicle of an ethnocide”), Bogota, 31 August 2009. See: http://www.onic.org.co/actualidad.shtml?x=36212

51 “Familias de tres jóvenes muertos creen que fueron víc-timas de ‘falsos positivos” (“Families of the three youths killed believe they were ‘false positives’ victims”, Cara-coltv.com, Bogotá, July 2009. See: http://www.caracoltv.


On 18 August 2009, on beaches close to the mu-• nicipal center of Manaure and the area of El Pájaro, close to the dairy farming area Musichi in Riohacha (La Guajira), the decapitated corpse of the 25-year-old Wayúu man Marco Segundo Gozález Gonzáles was discovered in an advanced state of decompo-sition. According to his family, some weeks before Marco Segundo was seen for the last time when he was taken to Riohachca by soldiers of the National Army who, upon arriving in the area of Serranía de Jarara in the jurisdiction of Porshina in Uribia (Alta Guajira), began shooting and wounded Venancio González in the leg. This quickly provoked the de-fensive action of the Wayúu men who were present. All indications suggest that after the initial exchange of fire, Marco Segundo González was in the custody of the National Army, which was to transfer him to the capital of La Guajira and hand him over to the appropriate judicial authorities. What happened af-ter the Wayúu man was taken from the dairy farm by the security forces remains a total mystery to his family, who cannot find any explanation for the loss of their loved-one.52

On 9 September 2009 members of the National • Army assigned to Mobile Brigade 7 of the Combined Task Force (Omega) indiscriminately shot 10 civil-ians who were travelling on the Puerto Cachicamo pathway in the municipality of San José del Gua-viare (Guaviare), killing three scrap traders (Ferney Aldana Herrán, Gonzalo Bernal and Hernán Anto-nio Mejía) and wounding another seven. The Army Commander General Freddy Padilla immediately declared the innocence of his men: “There is con-fidence in the command, it is a battalion that has demonstrated exemplary conduct, and its conduct

com/noticias/justicia/articulo144928-familias-de-tres-jo-venes-muertos-creen-fueron-victimas-de-falsos-positivos

52 Adriana Matamoros Insignares, “El cuerpo de un joven Wayúu que había sido detenido por la fuerza pública aparece posteriormente decapitado” (“The body of a young Wayúu who had been detained by the security forces later appears decapitated”), Riohacha, 1 Septem-ber 2009. See: http://notiwayuu.blogspot.com/2009/09/el-cuerpo-de-un-joven-wayuu-que-habia.html

on this operation was also undoubtedly so” said Pa-dilla, though in justification of the incident he also recognised “the conditions of the place made vis-ibility difficult”53.

53 “Investigarán muerte de civiles en operación militar” (“Deaths of civilians in military operations will be investi-gated”). El Espectador. 10 September 2009. See: http://www.elespectador.com/noticias/judicial/articulo160708-investigaran-muerte-de-civiles-operacion-militar


* Director, New Rainbow Corporation.** Investigative Journalist, New Rainbow Cor-

poration

“Parapolitics”: a phenomenon which refuses to disappearLeón Valencia* Oscar Fernando Sevillano**

In November 2005, thanks to an investigation by Claudia López which was published in the magazine Semana, Colombia learned that in 2002 the paramilitaries, having already sewn terror in much of the country, pur-sued a strategy that let them select and support no less that one third of the Congress. These politicians actively integrated into the coalition which has since then supported the government of Álvaro Uribe.

Claudia Lopez’ investigation observed that in those places where the Colombian Self-Defense Forces committed massacres, there were can-didates who, in some cases standing for the first time in Congressional elections, were obtaining atypical levels of votes.

With this study was confirmed that which up until then had been a rumour that rose and fell in the media since 2002: “that the paramilitar-ies were supporting candidates in the elections for the Senate and the Chamber”.

Simultaneously, Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris (The New Rainbow Corporation), with the support of the Swedish government, went about analysing the abrupt change that had unfolded in Colombia’s political map since the Congressional elections of 2002, finding that in the Senate and Chamber lists of the majority of the parties of the coalition govern-ment, together with those of the Liberal Party, the paramilitaries were placing an important number of their allies.

The principal objective of the paramilitaries was to achieve its own political force and a large number of allies that would allow them a gener-ous negotiating position for their inclusion in civil life. With this aim, they made a wide-reaching agreement with regional and national politicians in Santa fe de Ralito, which the country has come to know as “the Ralito Pact”. At the same time, however, they also had to address the regional elites’ need to resist the appearance and upsurge of pluralism and politi-

INDEX

9494 “Parapolitics”: a phenomenon which refuses to disappear 95Break the spell or more of the same? 95

cal modernity stemming from the 1991 constitution. This is explained by Eduard Gibson, in his comparative study on democratic transitions. This researcher demonstrates that when there is a political change in the democratic system of a determined country, the regional elites com-ing from the old regime resist these changes and or-ganise what is known as subnational authoritarianisms, constituted of local forces to impede the development of the new political class. It is then that the union between paramilitarism and regional elites begins to be built, with the consolidation of regional agreements that eventually reach the national level.

Pacts or agreements between the paramilitaries and the political class

The Ralito Pact was not the only such agreement made between paramilitarism and certain local and national politicians. Prior to this, others had been signed at the re-gional level which permitted them to capture local power and enmesh themselves with their elites, who generally resisted sharing power with an emergent class. These developments came to be known as their relationships were exposed and the security and investigative agen-cies probed the matter, making seizures such as those of the computers of Jorge 40 and Don Antonio, in which information demonstrating the level of interpenetration between local public power and the paramilitaries was revealed, along with the collection of regional rents and their close relationship with drug trafficking.

It is now known that these pacts meant much more than just a strategy for constraining the voter and chang-ing the political map. In the voluntary statements made by paramilitary chiefs, within the framework of the Jus-tice and Peace Law, a macabre picture has been drawn: over 21,000 murders and disappearances, hundreds of kidnappings, recruitment of minors, more than 3,200 common graves identified, millions displaced. That is to say, state capture in the regions and major influence on national politics has been based on a humanitarian crisis of gigantic proportions. Neither the dictatorships of the Southern Cone or the wars of Central America registered a tragedy of these proportions. The following are some of the pacts between politicians and paramilitaries that have come to be publicly known:

1. The Ralito Pact:

Signed in 2001 in Santa fe de Ralito with more than 50 politicians from different regions of the country, in-cluding senators, representatives, councillors and may-ors, for a political project that promised to “refound the country”. The revelation of this pact gave place, both in the Attorney General’s Office and the Supreme Court of Justice, to the judicial process that has become synony-mous with “parapolitics”.

2. The Chivolo Pact:

This took place in the municipality of Chivolo, in the department of Magdalena, on 28 September 2000. 13 mayoral candidates, and 395 persons, including many as-pirants to councils and assemblies, are thought to have attended. It was the first “big convention” of the “United Province for a Better Option of Life” political movement promoted by Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias “Jorge 40”.

3. The Magdalena Pact:

In an Army operation in the Nueva Roma estate, in San Angel, department of Magdalena, personal ef-fects of Darío Alberto Laíno Escopeta, an ally of Jorge 40, were seized, including a laptop computer and some documents, among which were discovered the original of the political agreement signed in 2002 by congres-sional aspirants for an “electoral subdivision” that would guarantee seats for at least three political bosses on the Atlantic Coast.

4. The Granada Pact:

In March of 2000, La Inmaculada-Carrisola School, in the area of Nueva Granada, jurisdiction of Tierralta, played host to what would eventually come to be known as the Granada Pact through which Salvatore Mancuso would decide who would be the next three mayors of the municipality of Tierralta.

5. The Caramelo Summit:

Little is known of this meeting, though the public be-came aware of it thanks to the 24 March 2008 publica-tion of Semana magazine, which uncovered this meeting between AUC leaders and a number of politicians who were already embroiled in judicial procedures due to “parapolitica” connections, whether preliminary or for-

mal. Under the headline “la Cumbre de Caramelo” (“The Caramelo Summit”), the magazine detailed what was re-vealed by Rocio Arias, regarding the details of this meet-ing that did not result in a signed document. (Semana.com 2008).

6. The Puerto Berrío Pact:

The Attorney General concluded that there was evi-dence of a political pact sealed between the group led by Senator Luis Alberto Gil, of Convergencia Ciudadana (Citizenry Convergence), and the Self-Defense Forces of Santander. Testimonies reveal Gil held meetings with paramilitary leaders. The first was staged in December of 2001 in a well-known Medellín restaurant, El Poblado, which was also attended by Iván Roberto Duque, alias Ernesto Báez. The Attorney General documents a sec-ond meeting, in January of 2002, between Gil and the “paras” Báez and Rodrigo Pérez Alzate, alias Julián Bolí-var. This meeting, staged in Puerto Berrío, department of Antioquia, was also attended by various councillors from Barrancabermeja who were convened, according to the prosecutor, in order that the Alternative Regional Move-ment (MAR) lend its support to Nelson Naranjo, and José Manuel Herrera, in the Chamber of Representatives. This was the testimony of former councillors such as Morgan Egea Sánchez, Jesús Sanabria and José Agustín Quecho (elespectador.com 2008).

7. Coordination Meeting:

In a document comprising 17 points, entitled “Co-ordination Meeting” six mayoral candidates obliged themselves, explicitly, to follow the directives of the paramilitary chief of the department of Casanare, one of those who shunned the peace process. Among the commitments agreed with the Self-Defense Forces is the plan of government and permission for “the organi-sation to supervise investment projects”. Martín Llanos also demanded “the assignation of three posts to people selected by the organisation and the availability of a per-son as a link to the ACC (Self-Defense Forces of Cordoba and Casanare). The document, it has been confirmed by investigators, corresponds to a meeting staged on 23 Au-gust 2000 in Casanare. (eltiempo.com 2007).

8. The Lorena Pact:

The paramilitaries Juan David Betancourt, alias ‘Wal-ter’, Ricaurte Soria, alias ‘Orlando Carlos’, Jhon Freddy Rubio, ‘Mono Miguel’ and José Bedoya, ‘Moisés’, gave assurances that in the mythical La Lorena estate, in the region of Luisa García, the former congressman Emilio Martínez made a pact with the Tolima bloc to protect and support his candidates. “The meeting, in which political issues were discussed, was held a few days after the La Chamba massacre” (14 November 2000) (eltiempo.com 2007).

9. The el Chocó Pact:

The recognised former AUC leader Freddy Rendón Herrera, also knows as “the German”, delivered to the Supreme Court a list of 23 politicians who were thought to be financed and politically supported by the Self-De-fense Forces. According to information presented by the Military Forces, the Élmer Cárdenas bloc, of the Colom-bian Self-Defense Forces (AUC) was directed at creating political projects in Antioquia, Córdoba and Chocó with the end of winning complete backing in the Congress, local government assemblies and town halls. (verdada-bierta.com 2009).

10. The Union:

In mid-2007 Salvatore Mancuso revealed to the At-torney General that around the time of the election of governors in 2003, six members of Congress formed a group called “The Union” and then sought him out with the aim of proposing that he support one of their can-didates in Córdoba with the aim of putting an end to the traditional domination of the López Cabrales family, whose candidate was Libardo López. Mancuso affirmed that among the six Congress members who made up “The Union” were Zulema Jattin, Julio Manzur, Miguel de la Espriella and Eleonora Pineda (eltiempo.com 2009).

11. Urabá:

The former head of the Élmer Cárdenas bloc, Freddy Rendón, said in August 2001 that Manuel Darío Ávila, César Andrade, Jesús Doval and Estanislao Ortiz would rotate in a seat in the Chamber of Representatives, as


part of the “United Urabá Grande” political project in 2002. Senator Rubén Darío Quintero, who was one mem-ber of this alliance, was alleged to have made a political agreement with the paramilitary chief of Urabá, Freddy Rendón Herrera, alias “The German”, to win the 2002 Congress elections (eltiempo.com 2008).

12. Pivijay:

On 20 Septemer 2001, in Monterrubio, a rural area of Pivijay, Magdalena, the first meeting between a series of persons including Neyla Alfredina Soto Ruiz, known as ‘Sonia’, was held. The meeting, which was also attended by local politicians and councillors, had as its objective to divulge the message and the objectives pursued by the “The Unique Province”, a movement promoted by Jorge 40, while also giving unconditional support to the management of Karelly Lara Vence, who was at that time the Mayor of the Municipality of Fundación, department of Magdalena, (2001 - 2003) (elespectador.com 2008).

“Parapolitics” changed the political map of Colombia

The investigation carried out by the New Rainbow Corpo-ration concluded that, in a huge wave of expansion, the paramilitaries won various wars and, as a consequence of forming alliances with the regional political elites, managed to substantially modify the political map in 12 departments, while also partially transforming others, es-tablishing a large power bloc in parliament, influencing the presidential elections, capturing local power in di-verse regions of the country and entering into a process of negotiation with the state. One of the most notable historical consequences of this process was the dismem-bering of the Liberal Party, the regrouping of the Conser-vative Party and the rise of new groups that would have a great impact on the political regime. (New Rainbow Cor-poration 2007).

These political groups, despite the fact their lists included already established regional political leaders who served to push their project forward, appeared in the national electoral panorama as new parties with new names. These parties and political movements went by the names of: Colombia Democrática (Democratic Co-lombia), Colombia Viva (Colombia Alive), Convergencia

Ciudadana (Citizens’ Convergence), Convergencia Popu-lar Cívica (Popular Civic Convergence), Movimiento de Renovación Acción Laboral (Movement for Labour Ac-tion Renewal), Moral (Moral), Movimiento de Integración Popular (Popular Integration Movement), Mipol, Equipo Colombia (Team Colombia), Apertura Liberal (Liberal Opening), Sí Colombia (Colombia Yes), Integración Re-gional (Regional Integration), Alas (Wings), Cambio Radical (Radical Change), Movimiento Nacional Conser-vador (National Conservative Movement), Movimiento Nacional Progresista (National Progressive Movement), Dejen Jugar al Moreno (Let Moreno Play), and various dissident sectors of liberalism and conservatism. Some of the candidates from these groupings, without much political experience, received high levels of votes. Oth-ers, already experienced in electoral battle, consolidated their standing. In some places, candidates stood alone for mayoral and local government positions, as their op-position abandoned the contest due to pressure from paramilitaries.

In the 2006 election, thanks to the 2003 political reform which obliged a regrouping of forces, various of these groups targetted their campaigns at larger parties or joined together to attain enough votes to allow them to pass the threshold. However, some maintained their existing structure and competed successfully in the elec-tion. It was thus that parties like Liberal Opening, Citi-zens’ Convergence, Wings-Team Colombia, and Radical Change began to consolidate their position in the na-tional political panorama. Meanwhile, the Conservative Party also began to regroup, in a process that allowed it to reconfigure itself too, in contrast to the Liberal Party, where some local figures opted to move closer to “uribis-mo”, regrouping in the different parties that supported him.

With the exception of the Let Moreno Play Move-ment, led by former senator Carlos Moreno de Caro, who didn’t reach the threshold of 2% required by political reform in the 2006 elections, they all maintained their positions and, in the elections of mayors and governors in 2007, they consolidated the political map.

These parties and movements, which in election af-ter election have continued their process of configura-tion, despite the fact that some of their members have

faced judicial proceedings for “parapolitical” activities, have wrapped themselves in the blanket of “uribismo” and the name of President Uribe. They have then taken to political proselytising, taking advantage of the accep-tance that the head of state has garnered among the Co-lombian people, which has in turn served to shield them from the press, which they accuse of being a bunch of little “bogotanos” trying only to sully the names of pro-vincial politicians. Furthermore, when the scandal stated to generate judicial consequences, the President started to pick on the Supreme Court of Justice and afterwards, when the processes were transferred to Attorney Gen-eral, he set his sights on that institution.

However, despite the constant verbal attacks on the justice system, the Supreme Court and the Attorney Gen-eral have not let up in their investigations in order to get to the bottom of the affair. (See annexes at end of document).

Calling national and regional politicians to justice, and its resistance to disappear from the electoral map

Ever since the discovery of signed agreements between politicians and paramilitaries, the Supreme Court and the Attorney General’s Office have immersed themselves in the task of investigating exactly what these links were and how far they reached. It was then that the first inves-tigations were begun, with Álvaro Araujo, Dieb Maloof, Mauricio Pimiento, Jorge Luis Caballero, Luis Eduardo Vives and Alfonso Campo being the first names called to the investigation. Immediately those made the subject of legal proceedings began their efforts to evade justice, renouncing their seats and thus, depriving the Supreme Court of its ability to investigate them and provoking the transfer of the cases to the Attorney General. At the time of writing this entity is handling 32 cases of members of congress elected for the 2006-2010 term, six from the 1998-2002 term, and 15 from the 2002-2006 term, along with one from 1990-1994 term and more than 294 cases concerning local politicians. The Supreme Court is meanwhile handling 39 judicial processes corresponding to congress members who have remained in parliament.

Along with the strategy employed by members of congress under investigation to evade the actions of the Supreme Court of Justice, as the only institution than

investigates and judges at the same time, and with the aim of not losing their majorities in Congress, the na-tional government has presented four political reforms of which two have been successful. The first of these, pre-sented in 2003, before the scandal came to light, intro-duced various modifications to the Colombian political system, the majority of which were designed to counter electoral fragmentation and the disorganisation of the parties. Mechanisms such as the single list for each party or movement, the electoral threshold and the electoral quotient system took as their objective political group-ing. For this end, a new regime of working was adopted on the benches which, as pointed out by the Constitutional Court, in some ways impacted the parliamentary regime. The reform also introduced the sui generis system of “optional preferential vote”. This mechanism facilitates grouping, without significantly affecting the individual clientelism which was prevalent in earlier periods. Mean-while, the composition of the National Electoral Council (CNE) was reformed and Congress was granted the right to choose its members - now with the quality of magis-trates - through the electoral quotient system. The pro-scribing of party defection, the possibility of carrying out open or internal consultation and new principles on the campaign financing were also part of the reform.

An examination of what had really taken place re-vealed balances that were less than encouraging. On one hand, the number of parties was reduced from nearly 60, which existed before, to not more than 16 having rep-resentation in the current Congress. In this regard, the reform has achieved what it set out to. However, thanks to the modality of inscription justified by citizens’ sig-natures, new movements continue to appear overnight, with candidates that are either unknown, or for one rea-son or another do not figure on the lists presented by their party or movement. This happened widely in the 2007 regional elections, in which more than 200 candi-dates presented themselves, thereby provoking a new proliferation of parties and movements which were not around before the 2003 reform.

The single list, combined with the preferential vote, generated a new scheme in which the purest and most elemental calculus of electoral arithmetic would be pre-dominant. Grouping according to programmatic agree-ments or societal models had been secondary. The organs


of electoral power are still in the hands of the majority powers in Congress, as if they were an extension of tra-ditional political interests. Campaign financing continues to function like a black hole in which large amounts of money of doubtful orgin, from corruption and the traf-ficking of influence, are deposited.

With the results that were obtained with this reform, it became clear that in order to achieve a robust success in the electoral policy of a country like Colombia, which is threatened by an armed conflict which continuously at-tempts to infiltrate the country’s institutions (See graph-ic no. 1, Politics and the armed conflict), it is not enough to consider solely the electoral mechanics which will be employed at the polls, but one must also have clear rules according to which both the candidates and the parties and political movements must present themselves.

A second reform scuppered by the “uribista” bench

In 2007 the then Minister of the Interior Carlos Holguín presented a constitutional reform aimed at raising the threshold from 2% to 5% and institute obligatory vot-ing, while also punishing parties and movements that put forward in their lists candidates who had judicially proven links to the armed conflict. This legal project sank in the hearing because many of the members of congress from the “uribista” benches did not sympathise with the threshold hike, nor the creations of nominal and public voting, nor the loss of reimbursements for costs or the loss of seats for those parties with candidates found to be linked to illegal groups.

But if the “uribista” bench in the Senate did not man-age to line up the votes necessary for this project, the Chamber of Representatives was not to be left behind. In its hands it had the possibility that the electoral au-thorities (Registry and CNE) attain the tools necessary to guarantee transparency in future electoral contests. However, just like the senators of the “uribista” coali-tion, they made it their business to sink it. This electoral reform brought with it three key points: anticipated fi-nancing, requirements for parties to supply guarantees, establishing of special norms for parties in the selection of candidates. It also gave the CNE tools to resolve com-plaints concerning fraud and annul votes in cases where fraud was evident. (Semana.com 2007).

The “uribista” bench’s third triumph: scuppering reform in 2008 and approving it in 2009

In June 2008 the entire country expected the first com-mission of the Senate to give approval to the political reform which, among its modifications, introduced the “empty seat” in an attempt to cleanse the parliament of seats infected by “parapolitics”. That is to say, it aimed to remove the criminality that had infiltrated the Congress. What is clear is that after approving the resignation of Senator Vargas Lleras, one by one the coalition parlia-mentarians left, leaving only seven of their colleagues to take part in the debate. As a result, it was not possible to begin this debate because of the lack of quorum and, as could be expected, a second attempt at moving the reform forward, which would have made it possible to remove the armed conflict from the seats of the Senate and the Chamber, was not possible.

The scuppering of the reform was designed in Casa de Nariño: the same government had kick-started the initiative in its first four debates but, from one moment to the next, it started to do everything possible to sink it. The break coincided with a summit to which Presi-dent Uribe invited the leaders of the parties making up his bench on Sunday 20 April 2008. At this moment the scandal of “parapolitics” had not only reached its climax - 65 congress members under investigation and 30 in prison - but was also casting uncertainty over the pos-sibility of a new presidential election. If “uribismo” lost its majorities in Congress, it would be become difficult to achieve good will for the key projects, such as a new reform to the constitution that would permit a third term for President Uribe.

After the April 2008 summit, three key elements of the government’s strategy were on the table. Firstly, it would be necessary to move quickly to sink the political reform. The hidden motive, which was uncovered by the former Minister of the Interior, was to maintain the “uri-bista” majorities. Furthermore, reducing the Congress by more than 30 seats from one moment to the next could send a mistaken message of fragile institutions to foreign investors. In order to achieve the sinking of the reform, Uribe set about calling the members of his bench in the Senate first commission to request their support.

Secondly, the leader decided to create by decree a commission of five experts to design an amendment to the constitution and he thus made a televised address to the nation: “The chosen must present the text of the reform to Congress next 20 July when the new period of sessions begins.”

Thirdly, there was also talk of a reform to the jus-tice system. But the proposal, which was not yet mature, caused such a public outcry, that the Presidency of he Re-public spoke out the following day to deny it was thinking of removing from the Supreme Court of Justice its powers to prosecute high-level government officials.

However, with the presentation of a constitutional reform which introduced reforms to the justice system, it became clear that the executive intended to remove the Supreme Court’s unique power to investigate members of congress and thereby alleviate them of their position.

In June 2009 the national government succeeded in getting the Senate first commission to approve, in a penultimate debate, the political reform text. This reform aimed, give or take a few words, to wrest congress mem-bers from the opposition parties, in this case the Liberal Party, with the aim of winning the votes necessary for the approval of a second reelection. Said intention was made clear by the extent to which the text of the reform gave authorisation to congress members to change par-ties two months before elections and thus avoid later sanctions from their own parties for acting in contempt of the bench.

Reform of the justice system, the perfect lifesaver for “parapolitics”

The first task that President Uribe assigned to his recently appointed Minister of the Interior and Justice, Fabio Va-lencia Cossio, was a justice reform which demonstrated the clear intention of the executive to throw a lifesaver to the members of its bench that were embroiled in judicial processes over “parapolitics”.

The reform of the justice system is one of the great necessities facing the country and which, since some time ago, has been demanded by different governments seeking to resolve the difficulties the poorest sectors of the citizenry face in getting access to justice, not to men-tion the justice system’s failure to address train crashes

and abuses of tutelage. However, the national govern-ment took as its priority the legal exposure of congress members. Thus, for both penal processes and disciplinary mechanisms, he proposed separating the investigation and prosecution mechanisms into different institutions. According to Minister Valencia, “the idea was to ensure the respect for congress members which is granted by popular will”.

In this way, the councillors delegated to the Supreme Court of Justice would be tasked with investigating mem-bers of congress in order that they be prosecuted, in first instance, for penal cases, by the High Court of Bogotá, and in second instance, by the Supreme Court of Jus-tice. Thus, whenever a judicial process was opened, the congress members would not have to resign their seats as they would be investigated by the Attorney General’s office and not by the magistrates of the Supreme Court. In the case of loss of investiture, the first instance would be responsibility of the Administrative Court of Cundina-marca, and the second of the Court of State Council.

In one of his declarations Minister Valencia said the objective of the reform was not to attack the structure of justice in Colombia. However, the solutions that would be given for the widespread problems of impunity were not clear, nor were they clear for issues of procedural congestion or bringing justice closer to normal people. The reform also neglected to make more severe or ex-pedite punishment of high-level public servants who use their investiture in order to favour the interests of third parties, as happened with so many members of Con-gress. On the contrary, the reform granted greater and more reinforced guarantees to the guilty parties.

In order to achieve its objective, the national gov-ernment had to resolve the problem of 73 members of congress who are today the focus of open cases at vari-ous stages in the judicial process, most of whom were backed by the Conservative Parties, Wings, Team Colom-bia, Radical Change, Citizens’ Convergence, Colombia Viva, Democratic Colombia, Moral, The National Progres-sive Movement, Liberal Opening, the New Huila Liberal Movement, The Social Action Party, along with The Lib-eral Party, in opposition to President Uribe.

This has not been the only lifevest sent from the Nariño Palace to the “parapolitics” legislature: in April


2007 it had done something similar when it agreed and drew up, with members of its bench, legislative formulas to allow “parapoliticians” to get out of prison, changing the categorisation of the crimes they were accused of, declaring certain crimes “unprisonable” or modifying the judicial consequences.

What this demonstrates is that the national govern-ment has used various means to save those who, with their votes and regional influence, supported the Presi-dent Uribe in taking power for the first time, and keeping him in his post for the second, without the head of state having to worry about what their relations had been or by what means they managed to get or keep their seats. He thus offered differential treatment to the legislative branch, refusing to dismiss the “parapoliticians” as he did the military officers involved in “false positives”, who were sacked and then handed over to the justice system.

The reorganising of “parapolitics”

If the paramilitary chiefs who were demobilised in the Itagüi Prison, where they where interned, continued with their criminal activities (Semana.com 2007), why wouldn’t the politicians who had been imprisoned for their links to the AUC, do the same from their places of confinement, supporting candidates for town halls, local government bodies, assemblies and councils in the 2007 elections?

The magazine Cambio (June 2007), revealed that Enilce López, alias “the cat”, ordered his potential candi-dates in the department of Bolívar to undergo a survey so he could decide who to finance. Rubén Carvajal Rivera, Arturo Calderón, Guillermo Castro and Fredy Socarrás, four aspirants hoping to become Governor of Cesar, were linked to the Araújo house had come to the fore from dif-ferent political currents; in the department of Magdalena the Omar Diazgranados campaign was supported by Tri-no Luna and in the list of hopefuls to become Mayor of Santa Marta was José Domingo Dávila Armenta, a former congressman whose name figured in the Pivijay Pact; in the north of Santander William Villamizar Laguado, a for-mer councillor who made his way into the political arena as part of the same movement that made Ramiro Suár-ez Corzo, strongly suspected of links to paramilitaries, Mayor of Cúcuta, became the strongest pretender for the post; in Córdoba, Alfonso de la Espriella, the brother of

Senator Miguel de la Espriella, had set his sights on be-coming Mayor of the Municipality of Cereté; Senator Juan Manuel López Cabrales backed the candidacy of Marta Sáenz for the regional government of Córdoba; in Sucre, Álvaro García Romero and Representative Eric Morris Ta-boada also promoted candidates. For the governorship, García Romero backed three candidates, The closest was “el Tuto” Barraza, who was his right hand in the Senate. The impresario Alberto Támara also figured, along with the lawyer Rafael Moreno. Morris Toboada meanwhile supported Jesús Paternina in his intention to become Mayor of Sincelejo (Cambio.com.co, 2007).

As can be observed, all of the members of congress processed through “parapolitics” later supported candi-dates in local elections, and their intention to resist the emergence of a new political class is not disappearing. (See annex no 7 and diagram no 7, in which the sup-port given by certain congress members investigated for “parapolitics” is shown).

The support continues

If during the elections of mayors, governors, councillors and members of parliament, the members of congress in-vestigated over “parapolitics” have not hesitated is lend-ing their support and putting their political machinery to work in the service of their allies, they are sure to do the same again in the next elections.

Those who are under investigation, or in prison, be-gan to move their pieces with a view to the next Senate and Chamber of Representatives elections, in order that they remain in power, albeit from a distance.

A clear example of this is the case of former coun-cillor Maria Consuelo Araújo Castro, who aspired to the Senate of the Republic as part of the group Wings-Team Colombia, through which she sought to regroup the political strength of her brother, former senator Álvaro Araújo, who is housebound due to illness; Arleth Casado de López, the wife of Juan Manuel López Cabrales, would be his replacement in the Senate; the lawyer Hernando de la Espriella Burgos would take the place of his broth-er Miguel de la Espriella and the former senator Álvaro García Romero, better known as “El Gordo” (“The Fat One”). García, imprisoned in La Picota, would pass his

votes to Teresita García, his sister, who would be warm-ing up with Democratic Colombia (lasillavacía.com 2009). (See annex no 4. “Long-distance parapolitics”).

This demonstrates that the tendency to maintain quotas in power, in order to continue pulling strings in the regions and continue the fight against the emergence of a new political class, which might wrest political and economic management of the departments and the mu-nicipalities from their hands, continues. The same can be said of its intentions to maintain the most important public posts at both the national and local levels, which will go on until there is a punishment vote for these peo-ple, like the one that happened to the Liberal Party over the 8,000 process, which has made it difficult for them to field a successful candidate for the presidency as their image deteriorated little by little at the national level. The ideal way for this punishment vote to become a reality, would be for President Uribe to request a total rejection of the combination of struggles in Colombia. Thus far he has not, and even less so with regard to “parapolitics”, despite his obsession with “Farcpolitics” even though he knows only to well that the procedures followed by the “paras” and Farc are different. The former place and support candidates to play the electoral game, while the latter sabotage elections with the objective of preventing them and capturing public power in the municipalities and zones where they have presence and there are no polls.

President Uribe and “parapolitics”

President Álvaro Uribe Vélez has not played the role that, as head of state, he should have. Instead of re-jecting this type of behaviour from the political class in the regions, he has shown himself not to be in favour of the institutions that initiate measures against them, but instead favours those they accuse, as was the case of Jorge Noguera, whom he defended to the point of say-ing he would put his hands in the fire for him. When the Supreme Court of Justice opened an investigation into Senator Álvaro Araújo, and the Attorney General later did the same with his father Álvaro Araújo Noguera, the President showed himself to be unwilling to accept the resignation of the former Minister for Foreign Relations, despite the political damage that decision would do to Colombia’s image in the rest of the world.

With the same vehemence with which President Uribe has defended his benches in parliament and his friends in the cabinet, with that same vociferous attitude, he has acted against the organisms charged with judicial investi-gations, the communication media which have criticised these facts, opposition politicians who have requested greater transparency from the government, and NGOs and academics who have analysed the armed conflict and its links to the ruling class.

When the Supreme Court of Justice and the Attor-ney General made the first calls, the President did not hesitate in attacking them, giving assurances that they practiced selective justice and when the communica-tion media criticised these happenings, he characterised them as “little bogotanos” trying to tarnish regional poli-ticians.

Some opposition politicians were also the target of attacks from the President. He branded them as terrorist cowards dressed as civilians, while also requesting mem-bers of congress and demobilised academics of M19 and the Socialist Renewal Current to be honest and confess to the country what were their links to the political class of the 1980s, along with the truth of their past as insur-gents. This challenge was taken up by one of them, the writer and analyst León Valencia, who in his book “Mis años de guerra” (“My Years of War”) tells of his time in the ELN guerrillas and the reasons why he gave up the armed struggle.

The President also unleashed a controversy with Senator Gustavo Petro, who brought forward a debate on the political control of paramilitaries in Antioquia during the Álvaro Uribe government, in which he made serious revelations not just about the actions of members of the then-governor’s cabinet, but also of his brother Santiago Uribe, then-Attorney General, and current Ambassador to Mexico Luis Camilo Osorio, along with retired General Rito Alejo del Río, Coronel Mauricio Alfonso Santoyo, and other senior military officers operating in Antioquia (Semana.com 2007).1

1 “Petro states that in ‘Las Guacharacas’, President Álvaro Uribe’s estate, the ‘paras’ murder campesinos”, www.semana.com, 17/01/2007. http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.aspx?idArt=102213


D iagram Nº 1The NGOs and academics who have studied the is-sues have not been spared the President’s attention. One of these is Human Rights Watch, which in its report exposed a series of obstacles the justice system faces in its investigations into “parapolitics” and raises the pos-sibility of international justice getting involved.

In contrast to what happened with the image of ex-President Ernest Samper and that of the Liberal Party, over the links between their electoral campaign and some senators backed by liberalism in Cali, something very different happened to the image of President Uribe. No matter how much those on the lists of the parties that back him are prosecuted for “parapolitics”, they also consolidate the entire country under an acceptance that is enjoyed by the President, who continues to enjoy an approval rating of over 50%. This allows those who sur-round him, despite being judicially investigated, to main-tain their influence over public decisions in the regions they hail from.

The former Attorney General Alfonso Gómez Méndez calls this the “paramilitary mentality”, with which any act or link to FARC or drug trafficking is bewailed, but the same connections to the Self-Defense Forces is permit-ted, without any consideration that all three cases are extremely serious and should be rejected by Colombian society as a whole.

Party or movement Political position No. elected No. of congress members involved

Wings-Team Colombia Supports government 13 5

Liberal Opening Supports government 5 5

Radical Change Supports government 35 12

Democratic Colombia Supports government 5 6

Colombia Viva Supports government 2 4

Citizens’ Convergence Supports government 15 7

Moral Supports government 1 1

Popular Participation Movement Supports government 1 1

Huila-New Liberalism Movement Supports government 2 1

National Progressive Movement Supports government 1 1

Social Action Party Supports government 1 1

Conservative Party Supports government 47 14

U Party Supports government 50 13

Liberal Party Opposes government 53 14

TOTAL 231 72

D iagram Nº 2

Party or movement Period Political position No. of congress members involved

Liberal Party 1990 -1994 Governing party 1

Liberal Party 1998 - 2002 Opposition to government 4

Conservative Party 1998 -2002 Governing party 2

Radical Change 2002-2006 Supports government 4

Citizens’ Convergence 2002-2006 Supports government 1

Popular Civic Convergence 2002-2006 Supports government 2

Regional Integration Movement 2002-2006 Supports government 1

United Popular Movement 2002-2006 Supports government 1

Conservative Party 2002-2006 Supports government 1

Liberal Party 2002-2006 Opposition to government 4

TOTAL 21

Impact of “parapol it ics” on parties and pol it ical movements prior to 2006

Polit ical parties with members in the Senate and Chamber of Representatives who are facing judicial processes concerning “parapol it ics”

ANNEXES

Annex No 1. Diagram No 1. Political parties with members in the Senate and Chamber of Representatives who are facing judicial processes concerning “parapoli-tics”.

Annex No 2. Diagram No 2 shows how the influence of “parapolitics” over political parties has its origin in previous periods.

Annex No 3. Diagram 3, shows support given to cer-tain congress members under investigation for “parapoli-tics” in 2007.

Annex No 4. Diagram No 4 shows how politicians under investigation for “parapolitics” have organised for the next Senate and Chamber of Representatives elec-tionsAnnex No 1 Diagram No 1. Impact of “parapolitics” on parties and political movements in 2006


D iagram No . 3D iagram No . 3

Support given by certain pol it icians investigated for “parapol it ics” in 2007 governorship elections

Politician Position Party Department Candidate Party Elected

Rubén Darío Quintero Senator Radical Change Antioquia Luis Alfredo Ramos Wings-Team Colombia Yes

David Char Senator Radical Change Atlántico José Name Terán U Party No

Enilce López Businessman Liberal Opening Bolívar Jesús Puello Conservative Party No

Familia Araújo Regional political elite

Wings-Team Colombia Cesar Arturo Calderón Free Independent

Political Movement No


Wings-Team Colombia Cesar Jaime Murgas

Arzuaga Conservative Party No


Wings-Team Colombia Cesar Guillermo Castro U Party No

Julio Manzur Senator Conservative Party Córdoba Margarita Andrade Democratic Colombia No

Miguel de la Espriella Senator Democratic

Colombia Córdoba Margarita Andrade Democratic Colombia No

Luis Alberto Gil Senator Citizens’ Convergence Santander Didier Tavera Citizens’ Convergence No

Alfonso Riaño Representative Citizens’ Convergence Santander Didier Tavera Citizens’ Convergence No

Oscar Josué Reyes Senator Convergencia

Ciudadana Santander Didier Tavera Citizens’ Convergence No

Antonio Guerra de la Espriella Senator Radical Change Sucre Julio César Guerra

Tulena Liberal Party No

Luis Carlos Torres Senador Radical Change Meta Maritza Martínez (Wife of senator) Return to Progress No

Enilce López Businessman Liberal Opening Bolívar Alfonso López Cossio U Party No

Juan Manuel López Cabrales Senator Liberal Party

Córdoba Marta Sáenz Correa Liberal Party Yes

José de los Santos Negrette Representative Conservative Party

Reginaldo Montes Senator Radical Change

Zulema Jattin Senator U Party

Alfonso Campo Representative Conservative Party

Magdalena Omar Díazgranados U Party Yes

Jorge Caballero Representative Liberal Opening

José Gamarra Ex-Representative Radical Change

Luis Eduardo Vives (senador) Senator Citizens’

Convergence

Salomón Saade Ex-Representative Colombia Viva

Trino Luna (gobernador)

Former Governor of Magdalena Liberal Party

Politician Position Party Department Candidate Party Elected

Carlos Augusto Celis Representative

U Party North Santander William Villamizar Conservative Party Yes

Ramiro Suárez Corzo Former mayor

Juan Carlos Martínez Senator Citizens’

Convergence

Valle Juan Carlos AbadíaFor A Secure Valley

YesCarlos Herney Abadía Ex-Senator United Popular

Movement

Dilian Francisca Toro Senator U Party

Álvaro García Senator Democratic Colombia

Sucre Jorge Barraza U Party YesErick Morris Representative Democratic Colombia

Jassir Farack Mendoza

Member of Parliament

National Progressive Movement

D iagram No . 4

Long-distance “parapol it ics”

Politician Position Party Department Candidate Target position

Álvaro García Senator Democratic Colombia Sucre Araceli Olivares, wife of

Eric MorrisChamber of Representatives

Eric Morris Representative Democratic Colombia Sucre Araceli Olivares, wife of

Eric MorrisChamber of Representatives

Muriel Benito Rebollo Representative Conservative Party Sucre

María Victoria Benito, hermana de Muriel Benito Rebollo

Senate

Vicente Blel Senator Colombia Viva SucreMaría Victoria Benito, sister of Muriel Benito Rebollo

Senate

Muriel Benito Rebollo Representative Conservative Party Sucre Jairo Merlano Chamber of

Representatives

Trino Luna Ex-governor of Magdalena Liberal Party Magdalena

Manuel Julián Mazeneth, Secretary of Education in his government

Senate

Support given by certain pol it icians investigated for “parapol it ics” in 2007 governorship elections (cont inuación)


B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lElespectador.com, “Las ‘vueltas’ de Gil con las Auc” • (“Gil’s ‘turns’ with the AUC”) (2008), See: http://www.elespectador.com/impreso/judicial/articuloim-preso93534-vueltas-de-gil-auc

Eltiempo.com (2008), “Cuatro alcaldes actuales de • Urabá firmaron pacto con las Auc, asegura testigo de la ‘“parapolítica” (“Four current mayors in Urabá signed as pact with the AUC, says a ‘parapoltiica’ witness”, available in 2008. See: http://www.elti-empo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-4207310#

______ (2007), “Cuatro ex jefes ‘paras’ dicen que • ex representante Emilio Martínez hizo acuerdos con Autodefensas” (“Four former ‘para’ chiefs say ex-representative Emilio Martínez made agreements with the Self-Defense Forces”). See: http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-3768302.

______ (2007), “Investigan Otra Cita De Políticos De • Casanare Con ‘Paras’ De ‘Martín Llanos’” (“Another meeting between Casanare politicians with ‘Martín Llanos’ paras under investigation”), See: http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-2408531

______ (2009), “Supuesto pacto entre Mancuso y • políticos para ganar gobernación de Córdoba enreda a Zulema Jattin” (“Supposed pact between Mancuso and politicians to win government places in Córdoba involving Zulema Jattin”), See: http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/justicia/supuesto-pacto-entre-mancu-so-y-politicos-para-ganar-gobernacion-de-cordoba-enreda-a-zulema-jattin-_5179297-1

Lasillavacía.com, “Los herederos de la parapolitica” • (“The heirs of parapolitics”) (2009), See: http://www.lasillavacia.com/historia/169

López, Claudia and Sevillano, Oscar, “Gobierno recon-• sideró decisión de proponer excarcelación total para vinculados con paramilitares” (“Government reconsid-ered decision to propose total non-imprisonment of those linked to paramilitaries”) in “Balance político de la parapolítica” (“Political balance of parapolitics”), See: http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-3574636, New Rainbow Corporation.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lNuevoarcoiris.org.co (2007), “Los Caminos de la • alianza entre los paramilitares y los políticos” (“Path-ways of the alliance between the paramilitaries and the politicians”), Arcanos magazine, No 13, pages 4 and 5, See: http://www.nuevoarcoiris.org.co/sac/files/arcanos/arcanos%2013_marzo_2007/arcanos_13.pdf

Semana.com (2007), “Fracasó intento por blindar • elecciones contra presión de los armados” (“Failed attempt to shield elections from influence of armed groups”), See: http://www.nuevoarcoiris.org.co/sac/?q=node/35

_______ (2008), “La Cumbre de Caramelo” (“The • Caramelo Summit”), See: http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.aspx?IdArt=111234

______ (2007), “Petro dice que en finca ‘Las • Guacharacas’, de propiedad del Presidente Álvaro Uribe, los ‘paras’ asesinaron campesinos” (“Petro says paras murdered campesinos in President Álvaro Uribe’s ‘Las Guacharacas’ estate”), See: http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.aspx?idArt=102213

_____ (2007), “Te llamo desde la prisión, 12 de • mayo de 2007” (“I’ll call you from prison, 12 May 2007”), See: http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoAr-ticulo.aspx?idArt=103556

Verdadabierta.com (2009), “‘El Alemán’ asegura que • financió 23 políticos en todo el país” (“The German says he financed 23 politicians around the country”), See: http://www.verdadabierta.com/web3/parapo-litica/nacional/1163-el-aleman-asegura-que-financio-23-politcos-en-todo-el-pais.

D iagram No . 4

Long-distance “parapol it ics” (cont inuación)

Politician Position Party Department Candidate Target position

Luis Eduardo Vives Senate Citizens’ Convergence Magdalena

Manuel Julián Mazeneth, Secretary of Education in his government

Senate

Alfonso Campos Representative Conservative Party MagdalenaManuel Julián Mazeneth, Secretary of Education in his government

Senate

Miguel Pinedo Senate Radical Change Magdalena José Luis Pinedo, son of Senator Miguel Pinedo Senate

Vicente Blel Senate Colombia Viva Bolívar Vicente Blel, son of Senator Blel Senate

Juan Manuel López Senate Liberal Party Córdoba Arleth Casado de López, wife of senator Senate

Miguel de la Espriella Senate U Party Córdoba Hernando de la Espriella,

brother of senator Senate

Zulema Jattin Senate U Party Córdoba Bernardo Elías Vidal, former colleague Senate


Extradition and other mechanisms of impunity: monitoring the “Justice and Peace Law”José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective

“Extradition, asides from impeding the admission to crimes by perpetra-tors through their voluntary statements, will leave the victims and their families orphans of protection.” (Supreme Court of Justice).

Since May 2008, more than 21 former paramilitary leaders, said to have participated in multiple crimes against humanity, were extradited by the Government of Colombia to the United States to face charges of drug trafficking, laundering and terrorism.1 In the moment of their extradition, the paramilitary leaders were involved in special procedures of Law 976 of 2005, known as the “Justice and Peace Law,” which conceded them the lightest possible punishments in exchange for confessing their crimes and deploying some resources to compensate their victims.

The decisions which made these extraditions possible were unexpect-edly taken in just the moment when the “Justice and Peace” procedures revealed the links between the structure of their armed organisations and the most influential and powerful sectors of the country,2 which included national and multinational companies, politicians, public servants of all levels, particularly in the armed forces, and sectors close the Uribe Veléz administration. Thus, the objective of the extradition decision was to

1 This was reported by the National Unit for Justice and Peace of the Attorney General’s Office, in Official Document No. 004794 of 7 May 2009, sent to the ‘José Alvear Restrepo’ Lawyers Collective, in response to petitions raised by this institution.

2 In this issue, it is worth underlining that in an unprecedented pronounce-ment the Supreme Court of Justice recently recognised that individuals that patronised, orientated, distributed, helped to consolidate or strengthen, benefitted from or served the aims of paramilitarism are also an integral part of its structure. Supreme Court of Justice. Hall of Penal Cassation. Writ 21 September 2009, dictated within the “Justice and Peace” process car-ried forward against Gian Carlo Gutiérrez Suárez, demobilised member for the AUC’s Calima bloc.

INDEX

110 Extradition and other mechanisms of impunity 111Break the spell or more of the same?

evade national justice, with regard to systemic crimes, and privilege foreign justice, guarantee silence, fuel im-punity and, definitively, to extradite the truth or any pos-sibility of it coming to be known.

This article presents some of the elements that have, during the Álvaro Uribe Vélez administration, combined to form a road to impunity which has impeded appropri-ate judicial action in the face of crimes against humanity committed within Colombian jurisdiction, underlining the instrumentalisation of extradition as a juridical mecha-nism that has been used, along with other strategies, since 2002 to facilitate impunity.

Demobilisation and de facto amnesties

In accordance with Law 782 of 2002, and its correspond-ing regulatory decree (Decree 128 of 2003), the laws which make up the juridical framework for the “demobilisation and reincorporation into civil life” of illegal armed groups, approximately 49,979 members of these organisations have been demobilised. Of these 31,671 correspond to the “quota” of paramilitaries demobilised collectively, 3,682 are paramilitaries demobilised individually, 140 are members of other illegal groups that demobilised collec-tively, while 14,486 are members of other groups, includ-ing the insurgents, who demobilised individually.3 Thus, it can be seen that demobilisation has principally favoured the paramilitary groups that were articulated in the “Self-Defense Forces of Colombia” (AUC).

Of these numbers, it must be clarified that of the 35,353 “demobilised” paramilitaries, 31,7184, that is to say 89.72%, were the beneficiaries of a de facto amnesty through the application of Decree 128 of 2003 with the argument that they were not facing investigations or sen-tences for “serious” crimes5. In this way, one of the great-

3 These figures correspond to data supplied by the National Police which was updated in July 2009, and collected from: www.altocomisionadoparalapaz.gov.co/web/libro/Libro.pdf and www.reintegracion.gov.co/proceso_ddr/presentaciones.html

4 Of this number, 31.671 were demobilised “collectively”, and 3,682 individually.

5 The juridical benefits granted within this juridical frame-work consist of: the generalised administration of reprieves

est projects of impunity in the history of Colombia was perfected.

The Interamerican Court of Human Rights (CIDH), in the case of the Rochela massacre, warned that

“the concession of legal benefits to members of armed organisations at the margin of the law (as established in Decree 128 of 2003) which are known to have been in-volved a complex structure in the execution of serious vio-lations of human rights, but which claim not to have taken part in these violations, demand the appropriate diligence from the competent authorities to determine if the benefi-ciary really participated in said complex structure of said violations”.6

However, these demobilised persons have not been required to reveal the truth concerning violations of hu-man rights or international humanitarian law in which

at the moment of demobilisation, and in the application of one of the following juridical tools to end the ordinary pro-cesses which were being carried forward or which could be carried forward against the demobilised who (i) don’t have penal antecedents (equivalent to the existence of a confirmed custodial sentence), or (ii) had not proffered resolutions of accusation which had been confirmed. The juridical-procedural benefits: (a) the cessation of proce-dures, (b) the inhibitory resolution and archiving of ac-tivities, (c) the proclusion of the instruction and includ-ing (d) the conditional suspension of the execution of the sentence; as can be seen in Art 13 of Decree 128 of 2002. In this regard, and according to data supplied by the Attorney General in Resolution No 0012733, in the month of August 2007 alone, this organism proffered the resolution of proclusion of instruction for diverse crimes in favour of 1.130 demobilised person and had issued, up until that point, according to Resolution No. 022443 of 22 June 2007, 5.663 inhibitory resolutions for the crime of conspiracy to commit crime in favour of demobilised paramilitaries. The Ministry of the Interior and Justice, in Resolution No. OFI 09-16612-DJT-0330 of 29 May 2009, stated that at the date of its response it had con-ceded 250 reprieves, through administrative procedures to the demobilised that were not postulated as special procedures of the “Justice and Peace” process.

6 See: Interamerican Court of Human Rights (2007),“Caso Masacre de La Rochela vs. Colombia” (“The Rochela massacre case vs. Colombia”), Sentence of 11 May 2007, paragraph 293.

they participated, or those of which they had knowledge during their time as members of illegal armed groups. For this reason, it has not been possible to determine who exactly are the responsible parties, along with their com-manders, financers, promoters and accomplices both in society and the state, much less to sanction those who participated materially in their execution. Simultane-ously, the crimes of forced displacement, recruitment of children and crimes of sexual violence, have remained particularly invisible. The occurrence of these crimes is well-known, but they are rarely made subject to justice.

The Supreme Court of Justice, in an important pronouncement,7 suspended the application of Law 782 of 2002, its regulatory decree, and declared that the benefits conceded to demobilised paramilitaries were permeated by illegality, principally because it was no se-cret that those involved in this class of structures were organised with the orientation to take part in multiple serious crimes against humanity, which in itself made them responsible for the crime of conspiracy to commit serious crimes. As a consequence, given that such con-duct was not contemplated in Law 7828, the demobilised paramilitaries could not accede to these benefits. Thus,

7 Supreme Court of Justice, Hall of Penal Cassation. Sen-tence of 11 June 2007, from the penal process carried forward against Orlando César Caballero Montalvo, demo-bilised member of the Élmer Cárdenas bloque of the AUC. Rad. No. 26945. M.P. Yesid Ramírez Bastidas and Julio Enrique Socha Salamanca.

8 In the juridical framework of demobilisation it is estab-lished that: “the persons who have demobilised within the legal framework of Law 782 of 2002, and have been certified by the National Government, will be able to be beneficiaries of the inhibitory resolution, preclusion of the instruction or cessation of procedure, according to case, for the crimes of conspiracy to commit crimes in the terms of the first incidence of Article 340 of the Penal Code; illegal use of uniforms and insignias; instigation to com-mit crimes in the terms of first subsection of Article 348 of the Penal Code; manufacture, trafficking and transport of weapons and munitions […]” (Art. 69 of Law 975 of 2005). Conspiracy to commit serious crimes is estab-lished in subsection 2 of Art. 340, and the elaboration of the previous disposition makes the exclusion of this conduct evident.

the Supreme Court established a juridical interpreta-tion which obliged the national authorities to process, according to normal penal procedures and with normal penalties, those people who were now deprived of the privileges that went with the denial of justice that had been assured them since their demobilisation.

Immediately, the national government and legislators set about designing a new formula to evade the Supreme Court’s decision, which was from one perspective dam-aging to the demobilised. Thus, to “resolve” the situa-tion of the paramilitaries who now found themselves in a “juridical limbo”, the government pushed forward Law 1312 of 2009 which would incorporate the principle of opportunity9

in Colombian legislation, in order to ensure the impunity of those who found themselves at risk.10

This law authorised the application of the principle of opportunity to demobilised paramilitary groups that met the following requirements: (a) they were not already involved in processes under Law 975 of 2005 and (b) they did not have antecedents other than those relating to their membership of an armed group (simple or serious conspiracy to commit crime), the use of uniforms or in-signias and the carrying of illegal weapons and munitions. Thus, the Colombian state created an alternative mecha-nism to guarantee the non-investigation, non-prosecu-

9 The principle of opportunity is a constitutional faculty granted to the Attorney General in order that, despite the existence of all the fundamentals necessary to carry forward a penal action, it can suspend, interrupt of renounce the process and thus refrain from pursuing and punishing cer-tain crimes. The same faculty was introduced in Law 906 of 2004 (the New Code of Penal Procedure), through which the Accusatory Penal System was introduced in Colombia.

10 In this respect, the proposer of Law 1312 in the Cham-ber of Representatives Nicolás Uribe state that “what this measure seeks is to materialise an agreement, which the Attorney General made with the Supreme Court, to resolve the juridical limbos in which more than 19,000 demobilised persons found themselves (bold added). Source: Caracol, “Aprueban ley para resolver situación jurídica de 19.000 desmovilizados” (“Law to resolve situation of 19,000 demobilised approved”), 15 June 2009. See: http://www.caracoltv.com/noticias/justicia/articulo142595-aprueban-ley-resolver-situacion-juridica-de-19000-desmovilizados.


tion, and non-sanctioning of demobilised paramilitaries who, by judicial decision, had already been denied the benefits of Decree 128.

The use of the principle of opportunity is not prob-lematic in itself, given that, correctly employed, it allows the judicial authorities to concentrate their resources on the most serious crimes, as only those of less magni-tude would be processed with this instrument;11 In fact, before Law 1312, it was never conceived as a means to renounce the authority and obligation of the state to in-vestigate and punish those responsible for serious viola-tions of human rights.

The question is that the vast majority of paramilitar-ies have not been investigated or convicted for the se-rious crimes committed by the blocs they belonged to and, in the face of the refusal of the judicial authorities to employ maximum diligence to determine what was their level of participation in the complex structure of execution of these violations, approximately 10,749 de-mobilised paramilitaries have already benefitted, thanks to the application of Law 782, from inhibitory resolutions without adequate determination of whether their illicit activities included the commission of unpardonable of-fences. With the approval of Law 1,312 of 2009, the state opened a path to concede similar benefits to the remain-ing “ex” paramilitaries, who are calculated to number ap-proximately 19.000.12

Meanwhile, the terms of the Law make it clear that its objective is to facilitate the concession of benefits to

11 Before the modification introduced by Law 1312 of 2009, the principle of opportunity could only be applied, in ac-cordance with Law 906 of 2004, to events constituting crimes which were sanctioned with a maximum sentence of six years.

12 These figures were publicly announced by the Ideas For Peace Foundation in: “Cámara aprueba proyecto de ley que beneficiará a 19 mil ´paras-rasos” (“Chamber ap-proves legislative project that will benefit 19,000 ‘para-rasos’”), 16 June 2009, See: http://www.verdadabierta.com/web3/justicia-y-paz/1348-camara-aprueba-proyec-to-de-ley-que-beneficiara-a-19-mil-paras-rasos. The same group also considers this an underestimation of the actual number of paramilitaries affected by the Supreme Court’s decision on 11 July.

the demobilised, and not to guarantee the rights of the victims. The law does not oblige, for example, the benefi-ciary to make a full and truthful declaration regarding the activities that they carried out as a member of the illegal armed group. Nor does it oblige the Attorney General to carry forward an investigation into their possible partici-pation in serious violations of human rights.

Finally, the most questionable of all the afore-mentioned is the lack of effective dismantling of paramilitarism.,13 given that it was the promise of their dismantling and total disarmament and demobilisation that the national authorities used to justify the flexi-bilisation of the rights of the victims, “in search of the longed-for peace”.

The residual application of Law 975 of 2005

The “Justice and Peace” Law grants a series of alterna-tive benefits to those demobilised persons who, finding themselves being prosecuted and punished by the judi-ciary in the appropriate manner (normal juridical practice with penalties of an average of 45 years for crimes against humanity), seize upon these procedures with the aim of guaranteeing irrisory sentences which ascend to a maxi-mum of eight years, in exchange for truth and reparation.

Those who did not benefit from these de facto amnes-ties, that is, a reduced number of demobilised paramili-taries (3.635), were subjected to the procedures of Law 975 of 2005 and enjoy the status as “postulators” to the “Justice and Peace” procedures.14 However, at the time of writing only 653 “postulators” have formally agreed their willingness to participate in this special procedure15, that

13 Diverse organisms, both official and non-governmental, have managed to confirm that to date there has been no effective dismantling of paramilitarism in Colombia, as can be seen at: http://www.peaceobservatory.org/es/1212.

14 See also: http://www.reintegracion.gov.co/proceso_ddr/presentaciones.html and: www.altocomisionadoparala-paz.gov.co/web/libro/Libro.pdf. Op. Cit.

15 It was thus certified by the National Unit for Justice and Peace, part of the Attorney General’s office, to the ‘José Alvear Restrepo’ Lawyers Collective in Document No. 008596 in August 2009.

is to say less than 2% of the 35,353 demobilised paramili-taries would face some type of penalty and, even then, four years after the law came into effect, none has been the subject of a confirmed sentence.16

Moreover, approximately 1,197 of the demobilised have abandoned the proceedings and, despite the state’s continuing responsibility to investigate and punish the crimes in which they participated during their member-ship of illegal groups, thus far there has been no news of any of them being called before the ordinary judicial authorities, in spite of the insistent requests of victims’ organisations. Finally, the other “postulators”, who are calculated to number around 1,960, are still waiting to be called to begin the proceedings.17

Taken together, these facts reveal that four years af-ter the application of Law 975: (i) only a minimal number of the demobilised persons who have postulated in the proceedings are being prosecuted, thanks to the flexible parameters that are foreseen; (ii) more than half of the “postulators” responsible for serious violations of hu-man rights have not been processed (investigated and punished), even by the “Justice and Peace” system; (iii) none of the crimes committed by the beneficiaries of the process of demobilisation and the application of the “Justice and Peace” juridical framework have been effec-tively sanctioned by the authorities, with those responsi-ble being identified and reparations given to victims; (iv) the advance in these proceedings is slow, interfered with and unfruitful; and (v) the absence of justice regarding the class of crimes which were authored by paramilitary structures is not going away, regardless of the emotive promises made by the national government when it pro-moted the “goodness” of Law 975.

16 On 31 July 2009 the Supreme Court of Justice annulled the only sentence that had been handed down within the framework of the special “Justice and Peace” procedures, dictated by the Bogota Judicial District High Court against Wilson Salazar Carrascal, alias “El Loro”, an important leader of the Peinado Becerra Front of the AUC, in which he was convicted solely for the crimes of aggravated ho-micide of two women, extortion and false public docu-mentation, as sentenced on 19 March.

17 The aforementioned data was supplied by the National Unit for Justice and Peace in Document No. 004794 of 7 May 2009.

Extradition: renouncing prosecution of crimes against humanity

After the demobilisation of some of the most important leaders from the ranks of the paramilitaries in various parts of the country, known for their responsibility for the plan-ning and execution of multiple atrocities and crimes against humanity, and in parallel with the precarious advance of the special “Justice and Peace” procedures to which they were being subjected, Colombia was surprised by the sud-den wave of extraditions, which had the backing of the Supreme Court of Justice. The extraditions were designed to place a group of paramilitary chiefs under US jurisdic-tion in order that they be investigated and prosecuted for drug trafficking and laundering, thereby prioritising these acts over the grave violations of human rights and crimes against humanity which they had also committed.18

The use of this mechanism threw into relief, once again, the lack of political will on the part of the state to investigate, judge and punish, in the appropriate man-ner, some of the most senior responsible parties in the history of barbaric violence which the national territory has gone through. It made evident the total disregard, in these cases, for the special jurisdiction of the “Justice and Peace” regime itself. The system’s flexible parame-ters regarding justice and truth were designed to create a

18 The number of paramilitaries who have been extradited at the time of writing stands at 21, and the most notable among them are: Carlos Mario Jiménez, alias “Macaco”; Salvatore Mancuso, alias “Mono Mancuso”; Ramiro Vanoy Murillo, alias “Cuco Vanoy”; Francisco Javier Zu-luaga, alias “Gordo lindo”; Diego Fernando Murillo Beja-rano, alias “Don Berna”; Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias “Jorge 40”; Manuel Enrique Torregroza, alias “Chan”; Guillermo Pérez Alzate, alias “Pablo Sevillano”; Hernán Giraldo, alias “El Viejo”; Martín Peñaranda, alias “El Burro”; No-dier Giraldo, alias “El Cabezón”; Eduardo Enrique Ven-goechea, alias “Flaco”; Edwin Mauricio Gómez, alias “El Mellizo”; Diego Alberto Arroyave, alias “Diego Arroyave”; Juan Carlos Sierra Ramírez, alias “El Tuso”; Hever Ve-loza, alias “HH”, among others. All of them have been participants in the process of demobilisation promoted by the President of the Republic, Álvaro Uribe Vélez and the majority of them have been postulated to become benefi-ciaries of the concessions permitted by the “Justice and Peace” law.


veneer of apparent judicialisation of the punishable acts which the demobilised were responsible for, and thus of-fer them the prerogative of a less-apparent impunity.

The Movement of Victims of State Crimes (Movice) and the organisations dedicated to the defense of hu-man rights in the country, in an attempt to slow this juridical maneuvering, got to work on the task of bring-ing the enormous consequences of the extraditions to the attention of the judicial authorities and the country through numerous awareness-building efforts focussing on the most representative cases.19 The result of these efforts was not immediate, but today the Supreme Court of Justice, after having supported the use of this mecha-nism in 21 cases of extradited paramilitaries, has pos-tulated to the “Justice and Peace” procedures, bringing together the reasons expounded by the victims, and has recognised that extradition implies:20

Ignorance at the highest levels and hierarchy of the comparison between crimes against humanity and the crimes for which the paramilitaries have been extradited thus far, and which is relevant given its evident subtrac-tion from national justice and the absence of mecha-nisms which guarantee their return to Colombia when their sentence concludes in another country, or to avoid the concession of benefits that might render impossible their future prosecution.

The impossibility for victims to participate in and oppose the domestic process of extradition, along with the eventual cooperation agreements which could be en-joyed by the demobilised paramilitaries, now extradited, with the North American authorities regarding “future collaborations” and the benefits that result from these.

19 One example of this is the decision adopted by the Sec-tional Council and the Higher Juridical Council, regarding actions with respect to the extradition of “Macaco”, prof-fered on 28 April 2008, Document No. 2008 – 1403. M.P, Martha Inés Montaña; and, on 6 May 2008, Docu-ment No. 110011102000200801403 – 01, M.P. An-gelino Lizcano Rivera, respectively.

20 Cfr. Supreme Court of Justice, Penal Cassation Hall, Writ of 19 August 2009. M.P. Yesid Ramírez Bastidas. pro-ferred as part of the extradition procedure initiated against Luís Edgar Medina Flórez, demobilised member of the Tayrona Resistance Front of the AUC.

Extradition traumatises the functioning of the admin-istration of justice in Colombia, whenever it becomes an obstacle to the identification and future prosecution of all those individuals who participated in criminal activity and the process of cooptation of the state by paramilitary groups. That is to say, all those who served to support, help or stimulate, finance, cover up or profit from organised criminality.21 All this can only be remedied, in the judgment of the Court, when the postulated individuals are perma-nently at the disposal of Colombia’s judicial authorities.22

Extradition, as a consequence of the previously de-

21 One of the practical expressions of these traumas is that the liberation has been registered, thanks to the expiry of terms, of some of those processed for links to paramilita-rism. Every time the absence of witnesses, previously ex-tradited, causes the postponment of dilligences, with the consequence of the suspected parties being liberated and processes being hindered. This does not happen when the parties in question are at the disposal of the national authorities. Ibidem.

22 In this regard, it is worth underlining that extradition has taken place amidst scandals and revelations in (a) the process known as “parapolitics”, in which at least seven of the extradited paramilitaries were key witnesses and had given their active collaboration to the discovery of the nexes, agreements and alliances developed with mem-bers of Congress, generally Uribe allies, to consolidate the political power of these illegal structures; and, (b) in the signalling of some of the principal economic and financial allies of the paramilitary groups, among which are em-phasised transnational companies Chiquita Brands Inter-national, the Dole Food Company and Del Monte Foods. In this way, extradition has also impeded the revalation of more details which could lead to solid investigations into this class of participation in paramilitary crime. For example, during an interview carried out with the para-military leader Salvatore Mancuso, alias “Mono Mancuso” or “Triple Cero”, on 7 May 2008, just days before his extradition, he recognised that all the fruit companies op-erating in the Antioquian Urabá, among them the North American brands Chuiquita Brands, Dole and Del Monte, voluntarily gave a percentage of their exports to the para-military organisation in return for security services. See: El Tiempo newspaper: “Todas las bananeras de Urabá le pagaron a las AUC, asegura Salvatore Mancuso a CBS” (“All the banana companies in Urabá paid the AUC, Sal-vatore Mancuso tells CBS”) , 12 May 2008.

tailed issues, is a mechanism that leads to the flagrant violation of the rights of victims of crimes against human-ity to obtain complete truth, justice and reparation.23

Despite the advantageousness and importance of this pronouncement, it is necessary to specify that the Court’s analysis was timid when it came to privileging national jurisdiction in the investigation and sanction of crimes against humanity. That is to say, if the govern-mental justification for authorising the extradition of the paramilitary leaders was that they were not meeting the conditions of the “Justice and Peace” Law, they should simply have been excluded from this law and made sub-ject to the procedures and punishments established un-der ordinary legislation instead.

This means that for the Supreme Court there was not sufficient cause in the failure to meet the “Justice and Peace” conditions to subject these parties to ordinary justice, despite the fact that the acts attributed to para-militaries include serious human rights violations. Instead

23 Thus, extradition specifically involves the violation of (a) Articles 8 and 25 of the Ameican Convention of Human Rights, which recognises the right to accede in an effec-tive manner to justice and enjoy all judicial guaranteees. In this sense, it also implies the state’s conscious disregard for its duty to treat victims with dignity, to guarantee their right to participate in judicial procedures and to receive, through them, prompt reparations for the harms done to them, as consecrated in the Declaration on the Fundamen-tal Principles of Justice for Victims of Crimes and Abuses of Power; (b) Article 5 of the principles of International Co-operation in the Identification, Detention, Extradition and Punishment of those guilty of warcrimes, or crimes against humanity, according to which: “persons against whom there is evidence of guilt in the commission of warcrimes and crimes against humanity shall be prosecuted and, in the case of being found guilty, punished, generally in the countries where they have committed these crimes”; (c) Article 8 of the same instrument states that: “States will not adopt legislative dispositions nor will they take mea-sures of another nature which could undermine the inter-national obligations which they have taken on with respect to the identification, detention, extradition and punishment fo those guilty of warcrimes or crimes against humanity”; and (d) it also breaks with the state’s duty to provide the victims and those harmed by any class of crime, all the judicial support they require, as consecrated in the United Nations Minimum Rules for Penal Procedures.

the door was opened to prosecution for drug trafficking, thereby relieving the state of its obligation not to permit impunity for the perpetrators of such infractions.

Today, even in the face of the evident advances in this regard, criticisms of the extradition of paramilitar-ies involved in systematic and generalised violations of human rights remain current, especially with regard to those important combatants who have already been extradited. However, there is also some satisfaction at having managed to slow the continuity and almost auto-matic application of this mechanism.

Some final reflections

Today the balance of the processes of demobilisation and the application of the “Justice and Peace Law” leads us to multiple interrogatives concerning its execution and efficacy. It obliges us, for example, to question: when are the hearings concerning the paramilitaries postulated to Law 975 going to finish?; when will investigations into the collaborators, patrons and beneficiaries of paramili-tary politics get underway? How long must Colombian society wait to know the truth and build a memory, to bring justice and assert its right to be compensated for the affronts it has suffered?

However, and despite the panorama of staggering ex-cess that has been discussed in this document, it is worth noting that the hopes tied to the efforts of the victims and of those Colombians who have resolved to break the curse that still bedevils them, in the existence of a voice that grows and demands the full protection of their rights, the undoing of impunity for human rights violations and crimes against humanity permitted by the highest spheres of state power, and the emancipation of individuals and collectives from the norms that support oppression.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lInteramerican Court of Human Rights (2007), • “Caso Masacre de La Rochela vs. Colombia” (“The La Rochela Massacre vs. Colombia case), Sentence 11May 2007, paragraph 293.


It is dangerous to think differently, or to show dissent for governmental policiesHollman Morris*

“Interceptions” or “bugs” are terms which hide a terrifying reality: the unhealthy obsession of totalitarian regimes for knowing and controlling the private lives of their opposition and those who simply think differently, even unto the most intimate areas of our lives and our families. Illegal interceptions are only the be-ginning of a series of illegal acts which may culminate in the taking of your life or that of one of your sources, in the case of journalists.

The authors of such monitoring and illegal interceptions are the secret police, under the direct responsibility of President Álvaro Uribe. Today, thanks to the light of journalistic investigations and access to documents of the Attorney Gen-eral, my family and I are conscious that many facts which in recent years envel-oped us - including our parents, siblings and collaborators - and which seemed “strange”, have a chilling explanation.

It was simply what Jose Miguel Narvaez, Luis Fernando Ovalle, and Jorge Noguera, among other visible figures from DAS, called “offensive intelligence”. This was carried out by the “G3 Group” and consisted of dedicating a good num-ber of people to discrediting us, blocking our initiatives, intimidating us and un-settling us psychologically, among other functions.

The “G3 Group”, according to the Attorney General, is comprised of dozens of men and women who since 2004 have dedicated themselves to spying on and illegally copying my emails and my telephone calls. It elaborated a register of all the bank accounts I have had and the trips I made over the course of my life; it noted down all the conferences at which I spoke in any corner of the country and it photographed meetings, encounters with friends and family and the residences of those same people. All of this was done, according to the investigators, in “real time”. My parents and siblings were subject to similar monitoring.

My younger children, who are 9 and 5-years-old, along with my wife, were not spared from the photographing, intimidatory calls and threats which - today I have no doubt - were carried out in coordination with the supposed organisation of intelligence which was given the name “Operation Puerto Asís”.

Of the illegal operations, some were detailed in 500 pages which the Attorney General found forgotten in a corner of the secret police’s offices. Today, this is my and family’s proof of all the harassment which we were made the victims of. In the same way, it became the living proof to the country of the dark side of Democratic Security, while also giving us a profile of its managers.

They dedicated huge efforts, in terms of personnel and money, to annihilate and judicialise us because, according to these “managers”, it is dangerous to think differently and show dissent in the face of governmental policies. For them we are more dangerous when we are journalists and we have the opportunity to denounce, criticise and give voice to the thousands of victims of the war in Colombia. For this reason, this group of criminals sought through illegal intercep-tion of our mail, to block attempts to finance our journalistic programme and they succeeded in some cases. They searched in my email to identify the sources of complaint (in order to persecute and murder them), they sought through my communications to locate my interviews and conferences in order to sabotage them, and to find out and establish who my friends were. They did this to damage friendships, my image and the project which might have moved forward with said contacts. This is why I understand why some sources chose to distance them-selves from us, why others never again responded to my emails, or why promised resources on occasion suddenly disappeared. All this was taken on with a terrible naivety which today shocks us, fills us with rage and frightens us.

In our family life, the intimidatory calls to my wife, during her second pregnan-cy, seeking to fill her with fear and insecurity, today have the same explanation: “offensive intelligence” which sought to destabilise us. They weren’t satisfied with simply damaging the journalistic work: they had to come into our homes, with our children, with our families and brothers and sisters. They took photos of my parents in their home and they followed my mother: one day, in a “great feat”, someone approached her saying he was a friend of mine, and revealed details of telephone conversations in order to rob her of part of her pension. This was possible because they had gone to the effort of intercepting my parents’ tele-phone too. They stole the computer of one of my sisters and they intercepted my brother Juan Pablo’s emails and spied on him. They wanted to get all the details of my family life; they wanted to find the piece of evidence with which they could throw me in prison, as was their primary order and the goal which had become an obsession for Noguera, Narváez and Ovalle, the chiefs of DAS.

* Human Rights Watch Defender Award 2007

INDEX

Break t

The experience my wife and children have been put through is painful and these lines cannot express all the details or the level of cynicism involved.

On 16 May 2005 funeral wreaths arrived at my house, announcing my death. They were carried up seven floors, at six in the afternoon, in one of the safest neighborhoods in Bogotá, and in minutes their bearers delivered their “gift” to my wife and daughter.

The threat arrived days after reports on my programme of the massacre of children in the community of San José de Apartadó, and after we publicly report-ed that President Uribe’s declarations demanding justice threw a cloak of doubt over the community which would surely be exploited by the thugs.

The threats against me provoked indignation from the Vice President of the Republic who ordered protection for me and my family, precisely from the se-cret police, that is to say DAS. Today we know that the order coming from the superiors of DAS was to use our guards not to protect us but to spy on us. After reviewing all the files and reading the details, we realised that from 2005 on I had placed the lives of my children and my family in the hands of these thugs. It was with good reason that Noguera, the former director of DAS, boasted that he was capable of hearing whether the opposition snored.

The threats from this black month of May obliged us to put away my daugh-ter’s tricycle permanently, while the only vehicles my younger son, Felipe, has ever travelled in are the type that have blacked-out windows and armoured doors. Going to the park is something they have rarely experienced, but playing among armed men is something they know only too well. Those threats, made with funeral wreaths, transformed the few years of life of my children and my wife. These threats were clearly the work of this sinister group, the “G3”, which by that time had already achieved absolute control over my movements and knew ex-actly what was intended by said threat. They sought to get into my home, into the games of my children, into my arguments with my partner, and they succeeded.

In the last five years, on two occasions, President Uribe has called me “an ally of terrorism”. He says this before the media, and without any argument to back it up. The only valid argument for him is that I think differently and promote knowledge of a conflict which has taken many of the best Colombians from us. Furthermore, it makes him terribly uncomfortable – sufficiently so that he ac-cuses journalists and defenders of human rights of being allies of terrorism, as if this would not have real consequences in our lives in the country of the “Sacred Heart”. President, do you really believe that these types of accusations do not have consequences in our lives? Can you tell us, to our faces, that these accusa-tions have nothing to do with the “criminal hunt” unleashed by your intelligence police against us?

We have now lost the naivety with which we received our bodyguards that May of 2005. As a result I even think - and as a victim I have the right to do so - that those public accusations against me form part of the same “criminal hunt”.

They effectively destablised us psychologically and emotionally: they can sing their victory songs because they made us into people who now doubt everyone who approaches us, we have become paranoids. Our lives, having been detailled in the files of the intelligence service, became the target of a kind of violation which left us feeling nothing of ourselves was kept in intimacy anymore, that our children are filled with tenderness and intelligence, but also fearful of the envi-ronment in which they have grown up.

What the “security apparatus” has still not managed to achieve is to NEUTRA-LISE us. Despite the accusations against me and the acts of sabotage, we man-aged to win the support of the international community to carry our journalistic project forward; this is our voice, and so long as the singer keeps singing, life continues. It is true that a high price has been paid, but this price is no higher than the one that will be paid by Colombian society if those who think differently are persecuted and the defence of human rights is stigmatised.

In the reports and the official press this dark side to the G3 and Democratic Security will surely go unreported, or will continue to be minimised in terms of its extent, with critics speaking only of minor invasions. There will be no public debate with society because the “intercepted” are a minority, but how danger-ous it is for a society to accept this. The harassment continues because we have opted to condemn these acts rather than stay quiet, and for this they accuse us of being “unpatriotic” and try to portray the victims as the victimisers of the “exemplary” Democratic Security policy.

Hollman Morris, Human Rights Watch Defender Award 2007grama periodís-tico; esa es nuestra voz, y mientras no se calle el cantor, la vida sigue. Es cierto, es un precio alto, pero no más alto que el que pagará la sociedad colombiana si el pensar diferente es perseguido, o la defensa de los derechos humanos es estigmatizada.

En los informes y la prensa oficial seguramente estos pasajes oscuros del G3 y la Seguridad Democrática no se escribirán o seguirán disimulando la infa-mia, hablando de simples “chuzadas”. No existirá el debate público de cara a la sociedad porque los “interceptados” somos una minoría, pero qué peligroso que una sociedad acepte esto. El hostigamiento hoy continúa porque hemos preferido denunciar estos hechos antes que guardar silencio, por eso nos acu-san de “antipatriotas” y con ello quieren convertir en víctimas a los victimarios de la política ejemplar de la Seguridad Democrática.


had been found days beforehand. They were all from the neighborhood, boys who seemed not to have any problems, save for those that affect the majority of their age group – having to struggle with poverty and being forced to work at 16-years-old.

“I remember those days when, at lunchtime, I would ask myself: ‘does he have food to eat?’ And at night I worried about the cold: ‘does he have a place to sleep?’,” remembers María. During that time, accord-ing to the authorities, her son was already dead. When she was finally allowed to see him she realised that they had changed his shirt, and that he had marks on his ankles and wrists, as if he had been tied up and kidnapped. “He had bruises, I don’t know if they beat him,” she continues, unable to stop her tears. “They killed him and they changed his clothes,” she says. “According to them, they all died in combat.”

When asked if she had realised anything was wrong beforehand, María remembers how, a few months previously, her son had told her about a group of men who had offered him work on an estate in a tropi-cal area. He did not want to go, and María, feeling suspicious, told him to be careful. But things took their course: “I don’t know what they told him, how they changed his mind, if they brainwashed him.” Months later her son started to show a strong desire to go, until about nine months ago, when he disappeared and died in circumstances that still remain unclear. Neither the police nor the State Attorney ever respond-ed, nor did they start the necessary investigations, at least to respond to the questions of a mother torn apart by the incomprehensible loss of her son.

II

“They offered him work and he never returned”

The mother of Víctor Fernando Gómez, 23-years-old, went to work on 22 August 2008, just like any other day, in a restaurant. When she got back, her son was not at home. “I asked his brother where he was. ‘They took him to the coast to work, it was a good offer,’ he answered… Víc-tor Fernando did not have a stable job,” explains his mother. “He signed up for military service, but they never offered him the opportunity to study or to get a good job”. Víctor Fernando’s mother was left waiting, day after day, until a week had passed without a letter or a call from her absent son. On 1 September 2008 her younger son received a call: Víc-tor Fernando had been found… dead. “The first thing my son did was

“Our sons are innocent workers, not delinquents or guerrillas” Nicolás Murillo Faucher*

I

“I went to the Public Prosecutor’s office… but they couldn’t help me”

María Sanabria is a worker, like so many in Colombia, who earns her daily bread with the sweat of her brow. Mother to a 16-year-old son, she saw her life change here in Soacha when February passed just like so many before. Her son, Jaime, who studied in school, collected money on the buses in his neighborhood and helped his mother out with the work she did on building sites.

One February morning María went out and left her son sleeping at home. When she returned, her son had disappeared. She remembers: “they told me, ‘don’t worry, he must be around, with his friends… he must be with his girlfriend’”. But as the days passed her fears grew, as rumours were spreading that a group of youths from the neighbor-hood had been killed.

“I went to the Public Prosecutor’s Office and they told me they couldn’t help,” explains María. Then her anxiety intensified yet fur-ther. Seeing the days pass without any news of her son, the desper-ate mother decided to send her only daughter to the Legal Medicine Department in order to finally escape from doubt. When she got home, her daughter brought a terrible piece of news: she had recog-nised the body of her brother among the bodies of four youths who

* Technical Secretary, Colombian Plat-form for Human Rights, Democracy and Development

INDEX

“Our sons are innocent workers, not delinquents or guerrillas”122 Break the spell or more of the same?

to call his elder brother, who called his sister, to find out where he had died; they did not tell me because I was coming out of surgery. They set about finding him and they went to the Legal Medicine Department, with a photocopy of his identification, and they checked, in Legal Medi-cine, that he was dead.”

As soon as she got out of hospital, Víctor Fernando’s mother went to Legal Medicine, despite the resistance of her children, as she did not yet know what had happened. Her children decided to tell her – she fainted in shock, unable to comprehend what had taken place.

Later, upon arriving at Legal Medicine, the authorities didn’t want to let her see the photo of her son but, being decided, she waited un-til someone came and told her “it’s ready now, you can see it”. She confesses that, having confirmed her son was indeed dead, she felt exposed and didn’t know what to do. Unemployed, and recovering from surgery, she would have to deal with the situation alone. A mother to eight children, two of whom have now been murdered, she began to sign the papers and begin the administrative process to recover the body of her son. Then she went to Aguachica with her daughters and their brother to get him.

“I decided to talk to the press and for that reason I live under threat”

Her surprise was even greater when the authorities told her: “your son was killed in combat”. This shocking piece of information, supplied by the people who communicated with her, provoked the anger of an in-consolable mother. “My son did not even know this place. He was a boy who lived at home with me!” The mother tells of how he would not let her go out alone, not even to his grandparents’ house, because of his fear that the guerrillas might take him away. “He went out and came back with his father, he never went out alone”. Later they told her “the Army killed him”. She asked: “But for what reason? How many do they kill here?” The questions of an agonised mother received only one re-sponse: “A lot from Soacha are killed here.” Gathering her courage, Víc-tor Fernando’s mother decided not to stay quiet when she was asked, “do you want to talk to the press?” She said that she did, because “I want to uncover this rotten affair”.

According to what she says, a lot of mothers in Soacha live their lives unaware of the truth, believing that their sons are working in the countryside or in the tropical zone, when in reality many of them have

been murdered, all in Soacha, and all around the dates when Víctor Fernando was killed. In the face of these circumstances, the decision of this courageous woman will have consequences that won’t take long to be felt. Her statements to the media, which came together to cover the story, led to her appearance in magazines. But it also provoked a worsening of the tragedy, not only for this Colombian mother but also for her family: “for this reason I have been threatened, and they killed my second son for bringing me to his brother - they made good on their threats”.

And this mother’s nightmare did not come to an end in that mo-ment. Not only did she discover her son dead in suspicious circum-stances, or “in combat”, as the state claimed, but she was also denied any support. Without resources or any type of transport, she had to transfer the body of her son herself: “I still owe 800,000 pesos for that today,” she laments, before explaining in a bitter tone how the issue was covered up and the response from the state was nil.

Painfully conscious of her experience, this woman relates how the soldiers “wanted to kill us because we were fighting for our rights”. With these words she says out loud what more and more Colombian think, but only say in whispers for fear of being threatened, tortured or killed, or worse still, that such fates will be visited on their family members. Many of Soacha’s sons have been murdered and their families continue to cry over their graves, or to search for the son, brother or boyfriend who has disappeared, amidst the constant fear that they will discover he has been murdered. The mothers of the Soacha victims, of the cru-elly misnamed “false positives”, want to send this message: “In order for the flow of tears to run dry, our children cannot let themselves be deceived, and parents must listen to and have more dialogue with their children, so that people never forget.”


Rural and food issues under the Uribe government Juan Carlos Morales González

The human right to water, environmental crisis and social mobilisation Rafael Colmenares Faccini

Commodifying public goods: deepening exclusion and poverty An analysis of waste management policy

during the Álvaro Uribe government Federico Parra

African palm: the embargoed prosperity of Colombia’s Northern Coast (Chronicle)

Ricardo León Cruz

Chocó refuses to starve to death (Chronicle) Juan Diego Restrepo E.

127

139

149

160

166

“A humble member of the Samarian community, dedicated to irrigation,

thanks to the subsidies granted by the national government”

INDEX


* Colombian Platform for Human Rights, Democracy and Development

Rural and food issues under the Uribe governmentJuan Carlos Morales González

In contrast to the vastness of the territories they control, the large ranch-ers all have one feature in common: the shortness of their vision. Any-thing that falls outside the fence surrounding their properties doesn’t seem to matter to them. The land, its resources, its animals and crops, the labour that serves them: all of these, without exception, are second-ary to the economic end which their property embodies.

They usually see the rest of society with the same narrowness and stinginess. Out of pure conventionalism they do not treat others as they do their labourers, or those who are different from their own, unless, of course, they have more power or control over the law, and thus can afford them and theirs that which does not belong to them.

For this reason, when they become presidents, regardless of the le-gitimacy or illegitimacy of how they got there, or whether their surnames are Bush, Fox or Uribe, they find it impossible to see the state, the coun-try and nation that they preside over, as anything other than part of their estate or functions of it.

The manner in which the government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez has di-rected rural and food policy in the country is a clear demonstration of this. Little importance is attached to the general wellbeing or the country, much less the campesino, afrocolombian and indigenous communities.

In the case of rural policy, far from being seen as a tool to revitalise the social roles and the rights of those who live in the Colombian coun-tryside, the current government has designed a territorial system which seeks, above all, to benefit the agroindustrial sector, transnational firms and large landowners, concentrating the factors of production, produc-tion itself and the earnings of the sector.

This became clear with the formulation of the “2002 – 2009 Devel-opment Plan: Towards a Communitary State” when, with the supposed

INDEX

128 Rural and food issues under the Uribe government 129Break the spell or more of the same?

Tab le 1

Principal micronutrient deficiencies in the country (hidden hunger), 2005 (as a percentage of the total population)

strategy of “constructing social equity”, what has be-come known as “social management of the countryside” was announced. Said strategy prioritised the following (DNP 2003: 228-232):

The promotion of chains of production with a re-• gional focus.

The consolidation of regional competitivity agree-• ments.

The enlargement and recovery of crop lands for • some products considered to be of economic im-portance.

The promotion of rural business projects.•

The promotion of agro-touristic activities.•

The foment of scientific and technological develop-• ment in the sector.

Improved access to factors of production and fi-• nance.

Before evaluating this formula in more detail,1 it is worth noting that, apart from a greater volume of rheto-ric aimed at making people believe the rural policy would benefit the campesino population (almost no mention is made of the afrocolombian or indigenous communities), the Uribe regime’s second development plan insists on the same goals (DNP 2007).

The real agenda of promoting chains of production with a regional focus is to create the conditions neces-sary for the control of production, transformation and commercialisation of certain goods and continued con-centration in the hands of the few. However much it is

1 The present article will consider three primary strategies, as the others, one way or another, are subordinate.

argued that this helps to incentivise production, improve the quality of goods produced and lower costs for the producer and, in the end, the consumer, what is clear is that one of the principal goals is to limit domestic com-petition, which translates into profits for a selected few.

The case of milk offers a fitting example. Arguing that health factors were their motivation, from August 2008 Decree 2838/2006 (Ministry for Social Protection) took effect, prohibiting the distribution of raw milk at the na-tional level. Obviously, this benefits the large pasteurising companies, as they are the ones who have the best pro-cessing infrastructure. This move simultaneously obliged small producers, in order to be able to sell their milk, to become part of the chain of production and adhere to the rules and prices imposed upon them.

The resulting impact on food security for normal Co-lombians did not take long to manifest. By leaving them jobless and the subject of police surveillance, the mea-sure impacted close to 100,000 families whose income depended on said economic activity. (Milk Producers As-sociation, 2008), and condemned millions of consumers with scarce resources to begin paying twice as much for milk now coming from the larger companies.

State actions such as this become even more shame-ful when one considers that calcium deficiency in the country (one of the principal nutrients in milk) affects almost 86% of the general population (see table No. 1.)2; a tragedy that has not provoked the least concern from the Uribe government3.

2 Table based on data from ICBF 2006: 282, 284, 289, 293.

3 Paradoxically, the presence of publicity for pharmacologi-

Upon realising that they would have to minimise the impact this might have in public opinion, the large pasteurisers, on occasions accompanied by the govern-ment, set about distributing bags and glasses of milk in some deprived urban areas. This masking exercise was repeated recently when the media reported that while

cal calcium substitutes goes up day by day in the coun-try’s communication media.

the town of Kogui, in Sierra Nevada, Santa Marta, would die of hunger, the small-scale producers of Antioquia, paying the consequences of inserting themselves in the production chain, had to throw out the excess milk that the large companies did not want to buy.

Another of the goals of this obsessive promotion of chains of production, apart from limiting domestic competition from small and medium producers, was to stimulate specific crops which would strengthen what is

Type of deficiency 2005 (%)

Vitamin A 32

Vitamin C 22,6

Zinc 62,3

Calcium 85,8

Food security refers to the real possibility of individuals and households being able to accede, physically or economically, to the foodstuffs necessary for their adequate nutrition (Morales 2009). 41% of Colombian households experience food insecurity. (ICBF 2006: 335)

Tab le 2

Sector Specific product

Slow-growing crops Palm oil, cocoa, rubber, macadamia and cashew

Fruits Dragon fruit, mango, baby bananas, tahiti lime, avocado, gooseberries, pineapple, passion fruit, quito oranges, mulberries, and tree tomatoes

Vegetables Chili, asparagus, scallions, broccoli, cauliflower, artichokes, gourmet vegetables

Forestry

Potential exportables Tobacco, cotton and potatoes

Beef and dairy

Aquaculture Shrimp farming and tilapia

Special coffees

Traditional exports Coffee, flowers, sugar, banana

Biofuels Ethanol made from sugar cane, panela sugarcane and yuca, and biodiesel made from olive oil

Sectors and specif ic products in the Uribe government’s agro-exports plan


called the “Apuesta Exportadora Agropecuaria” (“Agricul-tural Export Bet”). As can be appreciated in table No. 2 (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development 2006: 6) this was limited to 10 areas which, under the supposition that they would be completely redirected to domestic consumption, would only produce six important prod-ucts for human nutrition (potatoes, beef, dairy produce, shrimp, tilapia and banana).4

Later, we will see that when the government speaks of its purpose of “enlarging and recovering crop zones for some products of economic importance” we should be aware of the vastness of the resources and territory they intend to dedicate to these agricultural products, to the detriment of others.

The consolidation of regional competitivity agree-ments presupposes the strengthening of chains of production “in coherence with the policy of export com-petitivity” which the Foreign Trade Assessor Committees may develop at the regional level, after carrying out “mar-ket intelligence studies” (DNP 2003: 228-229).

It must be taken into account that all this signifies not only a reordering of the territory (armed or economic displacement “welcome”), but also the will to unleash homogenizing dynamics in both productive and demo-graphic terms. With this end in mind, the Colombia Rural Development Institute (INCODER) has undertaken the

4 Strategic foods are considered to be those with high levels of carbohydrates and proteins. The former, as the most immediate and economic source of energy, and the pro-teins because, evolutionarily speaking, they determine the process of development of our species.

task of identifying “areas for agricultural and rural devel-opment” which:

“… are founded on regions and territories which have con-centrated populations which make anthropic interventions on a common base of natural resources; with options or comparative advantages for the development of sustain-ably production systems, respecting diversity and main-taining restrictions on conservations zones or protected areas; which have competitive economic options and; with relatively homogenous socioeconomic conditions…” (IN-CODER 2004: 12. Bold added).

As can be appreciated, the current government fol-lows the ricardian credence of “comparative advantag-es”, not only to subordinate the national economy to the rules set by the World Trade Organisation, but also orders the system of internal agricultural production cor-respondingly.

Regional productive specialisation implies a serious threat to food autonomy and the internal production of food. It is worth remembering that campesino family economics is characterised by the rational use of pro-ductive factors, the diversity of agricultural and livestock production, and the final destination of foods, whether they be for own consumption or the internal market or urban market.

In this sense, adapting the production and internal markets of the agricultural sector, according to regional specialisation with a view to exportation, implies an at-tack on the rural populations’ possibility of attaining the food it prefers (self-production or purchase of lacking foodstuffs from local markets), storing them and contrib-uting to the guarantee of food sovereignty in the county.

From the demographic point of view it is predictable that regional productive specialisation will also have se-rious consequences. Given that this adheres to the en-thusiasm for consolidating chains of production, in the framework of ferocious competition which inevitably ac-celerates the pace of concentration of factors of produc-tion, production itself and earnings, the small farmer and many medium-size farmers will end up being sucked into the whirlpool of dependency in the face of large capital. The case described above, of small farmers throwing out milk which the large pasteurising firms did not want to buy, is illustrative in this respect, and may be a prelude to greater rural depopulation and silent waves of migra-tion to the cities.

This, of course, concerns those in the Uribe Vélez circle little. In fact, in their obsession to continue im-posing biofuels as the priority agricultural activity, se-nior government staff have not hesitated in expressing their intention to link this activity to close to five million campesinos (Semana.com, 2007). Considering that ac-cording to the DANE census of 2005 the rural population was about 11 million, this means that one way or another some 45% of this population will be forced to change its productive vocation. Moreover, this will sharpen a process of deceleration of growth in the population ac-tive in agricultural work, which, in the Colombian case, is already higher than the corresponding figures for other developing countries (Morales 2007) (See Figure No. 1).

Against the backdrop of these circumstances, we might ask: Who will produce our food? And how will they do it?

With regard to the enlargement and recovery of crop-ping zones for certain products that are considered to

be of economic importance, the government’s proposal centres on “rescuing” land for the production of rubber, cotton, palm oil, corn, soya, industrial yuca, cocoa, for-estry and fruit and vegetable products (DNP 2003: 229). It is argued that this will be done without enlarging the agricultural frontier and using territory that was previ-ously used for illicit crops.

The “recovery” and granting of croplands is subject to the capacity of those interested to develop produc-tion projects in line with the government’s plans, es-pecially with regard to the aforementioned chains of production and crops that come under the “agricultural export plan”, cited in table No 2. Even when, in formal terms, the intention of this government is described as “enterprisation” of the campesinos, and improving their access to rural microfinance (DNP 2007: 222) (which would supposedly make possible the improvement of their earnings by inserting them into these chains and productive projects), the reality is that the bulk of the campesino population does not have the backing neces-sary to attain the credits promised, and/or will therefore end up giving up their land and labour to economic ac-tivities which will impede their access to the foods they need. Furthermore, at the cost of the rights of the rest of the population, the political and economic interests of the large businesses will always be given priority by this government, as was clearly demonstrated at the begin-ning of last year with the scandal surrounding the sale of the Carimagua estate, or more recently, the tax scandal concerning “Las Pavas” estate.

It is expected that the “recovery of croplands” will lead to 4.4 million hectares being sewn with products for the export plan by 2020 (Ministry for Agriculture and Ru-

“Food sovereigny is the right of every national collective to decide what, how and when, to sew or to raise cattle, in order to guarantee an adequate supply of food to its members, according to the traditions that characterise it” (Morales 2006: 33)In extenso, it is the same principle as food autonomy, but it also denotes the sovereign control that the countries must have, as a national collective, over its food process.

Food autonomy is the right of every rural community, whether it be campesino, indigenous or afro-colombian, to control, according to its uses, customs and life projects, its own food production processes. The food process, meanwhile, involves not only the final consumption of nutritionally adequate foods, but also the production, transformation, transaction (not always economic) and social and cultural construction that the communities have concerning foods. (Morales 2009).


ral Development 2006: 7). That is to say, a rise of 132% on the area sewn with these crops in 2006. In contrast, the expansion of the area sewn with “other crops” (in-cluding foods for domestic consumption) will be barely 10%, reaching a total of 3,198,509 hectares.

This means that if in 2006 “other crops” had been planted in 1,002,086 hectares more than those of the ex-port plan, in 2020 the difference will be 1,300,119 hect-ares, but in favour of the export products. Under these circumstances, what has happened to the constitutional mandate that states in Article 65 that “the production of foods will enjoy special protection from the state”?

Once aware of the state’s intention to remove pro-tection from the internal production of food, with the corresponding impact on internal availability and food sovereignty, it is easier to understand the government’s stubbornness regarding the recent declaration of the Ru-ral Development Statute’s (EDR) unconstitutionality. In effect, apart from the other threats and the fact of having approved and begun implementation without consulting rural communities, the EDR sought to direct the coun-tryside towards this radical transformation, while also

rapidly “solving” the land problem by setting the bases to legitimate the expropriation which the displaced com-munity had fallen victim to (Grupo Semillas 2006).

It is worth noting that for the current regime the so-cial problem surrounding land is not the issue so much as how it is employed: that is to say, a productive system that benefits the land-owners who direct the country. “The important issue is not the tenancy of the land but its incorporation into a stable and equitative production system,” states the 2002-2006 Development Plan calmly. (DNP 2003: 229).

Despite knowing that the Gini index of land concen-tration in Colombia is one of the highest in the world (0.85 %) (Maya 2006: 29), the issue of comprehensive agrarian reform has been completely absent from the government’s agenda. This flies in the face of the fact that the internal conflict is in large part explained pre-cisely by the tenancy of this factor of production. In the framework of the state’ obligations to guarantee the right to food (and other human rights) agrarian reform is one of the measures that should be considered and devel-oped as a priority (FAO 2006: 88).

In this sense, the intention of the current rural policy to “enlarge and recover croplands” for the promotion of chains of production oriented to the export market (asides from what has happened in Carimagua, the internal scan-dals at INCODER, the lack of will to give reparations to and restore the properties of victims of the conflict, the failed EDR and the scandal stemming from the subsidies granted through the Agroingresoseguro programme), is a clear indication of the importance those close to this government attach to the purpose of deepening the pro-cess of agrarian counter-reform which even some media outlets have stopped ignoring (elespectador.com 2009). In a way, knowing the urgent need of the rural population to accede to or recover their land, the “enlargement and recovery of croplands” for the purpose of exportation is effectively using a silencer to kill the rural sector, sover-eignty and food autonomy, along with the possibility of real agrarian reform.

Beyond the fact that part of the sector is involved in a reign of paramilitary terror, the case of biofuels is paradigmatic of the way in which a dynamic of economic intervention in the rural sector (and the urban sector, through consumption and the adaptation of bureaucratic business) can have a catastrophic effect on the strategic and food possibilities of those living in the Colombian countryside. We have already mentioned that the Uribe government, as if it were playing a board game, wants to involve 45% of the rural population in its plans. Not satisfied with this, it has set its sights on seven million hectares which have potential for this economic activity, (Álvarez 2008) and it hopes, within eight years, to have extended the cultivation of these crops to at least three million hectares (Martínez 2007).

Such decisions have further accelerated the concur-rence between these crops and those that are destined

The Carimagua Estate, of approxiamtely 17.000 ha., located in the region known as Llanos Orientales, had been assigned to become the property of hundreds of families displaced by the internal conflict in Colombia, In early 2008 the national government, headed by the President himself, changed the designation of the land in order that it be made a concession to the private sector for the production of biofuels. This situation provoked a national scandal in that it brought to light the prioritisation of the private sector over the rights of the displaced population. Finally, it was decided to concede the property to the state company Petróleos de Colombia, Ecopetrol, with the aim that the land be used for the production of ethanol in a supposed “society” with some of the displaced families; this means that, in contradiction of public opinion, agroindustrial interests were imposed over those of the displaced families. (Semana.com 2008)

The Las Pavas estate, located in the department of Bolívar, is the subject of an ongoing dispute between campesinos of the area and the large businesspersons of the palm industry, who are allies of the President. This case is illustrative of how a process of peaceful civil resistance carried out by the campesinos of the area, who invoked the right to cultivate the land for their own food needs, is the object of fierce repression from both the state and paramilitary forces operating in the region. (Molano 2009).


for domestic consumption. In fact, as can be confirmed in Figure No. 2 (http://faostat.fao.org/site/636 and http://faostat.fao.org/site/567), the rate of growth in domestic production of some strategic foods such as cereals is less than that registered for, for example, palm oil.

Knowing full well that the production of biofuels wrests large amounts of economic resources from state management, the demographic and territorial drift to-wards this sector cannot but affect the food possibilities of the Colombian population.

It is finally the moment to recognise that Colombia lacks a coherent public policy oriented to the safeguard-ing and guaranteeing the food security and sovereignty of the country. Such a policy, drawn up from a human rights perspective, seems even further away.

Following the culmination of the 1996-2005 National Food and Nutrition Plan, it was only from March 2007 that the Colombian government made public, through Conpes Social Document 113, its substitute, the Nation-al Food and Nutritional Security Policy (PSAN).

However, the same government has placed a series of obstacles in the path of this policy, starting with its lack of will to establish a legal framework to support food and nutritional security in the country,5 which, along with other factors, demonstrates the level of regressivity af-flicting the right to food in Colombia.

This does not mean to say the PSAN is overflowing with virtues and is a reference in terms of progressivity with regard to this right. Upon reading the goals of the policy, only one of the 16 stated by the Conpes docu-ment makes direct reference to an issue of direct rele-vance to the internal production of foods: “Increase the agricultural surface harvested (…) by 13% by 2015” (Na-tional Political, Economic and Social Council 2007: 42). This goal seems like a bluff given that, in other sources, the Uribe government indicates that the expansion of the

5 As occured in the veto of Legal Project 203 of 2007 (Sen-ate). See: Colombian Platform for Human Rights, Democ-racy and Development, 2009.

In the framework of the negotiation of Free Trade Agreements, the Uribe government put into

action the Secure Agricultural Income Programme with the supposed aim of protecting and

strengthening the rural sector in the face of challenges, which implies the opening of internal

markets to foreign agricultural products. However, the official rhetoric, according to which

the possibilities for access to the benefits of this programme are democratic and transparent,

has been in contrast to the fact that of late a large part of the non-refundable million-plus

credits granted by the programme and paid for by normal taxpayers, have gone to families

or businesspersons linked to (i) the financing of previous Uribe election campaigns or the

current reelection referendum (ii) forced displacement or agrarian conflicts in various parts of

the country (iii) large capital groups from the agro-industrial sector (iv) relatives or allies who

promoted the programme (v) and even members of the government itself, along with figures from

the worlds of paramilitarism and drug trafficking.

Arguing that any campesino can benefit from the programme, the reality is that the selection

criteria for possible beneficiaries are highly exclusionary, given that applicants must be linked to

projects with high capital inputs and/or service to the export plan for the country.

Far from being an initiative to rescue the small and medium-sized campesino, along with other

rural workers, thus far the programme is more like the solidification of a possible and complex

conspiracy to commit crime, preceded by opportune legal protections, behind which are many

families and criminals close to the current government.

area planted with crops not forming part of the export plan will only be 3.5% by 2015 (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development).

Beyond the grade of improvisation, incoherence and lack of a legal framework with a rights-based perspective on the rights to food and nutritional security, what is clear is that the food crisis being experienced by the Colom-bian population cannot be reversed with policies (includ-ing the PSAN and the Uribe government’s rural policy) that ignore the strategic roles of internal production of foods and food autonomy, and which furthermore, run contrary to the recommendations made by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.6

In this sense, the endangerment of the right to food in Colombia demands that society as a whole takes up

6 “(…) support small farmers (….) and develop mechanisms of sustainable agricultural develop-ment”, De Schutter (2008).

the issue and reflects on it, in order that it understand that the guarantee of this right cannot be given without considering, at the same time, the way in which agrarian and rural policy feeds into this purpose.

A key element to take into account is that organi-sations and social processes must intensify efforts, in both the local and regional levels, to strengthen defense of food autonomy as an alternative rural model to that of productive homogenisation, economic displacement and the reduction of physical and economic access to foods. As a consequence, and in the face of the threats posed by this model and the free trade agreements, the fight for the food sovereignty of the country cannot be conceived without recognising the strategic importance of food autonomy in rural communities.

In the same way, it is also necessary for society to be conscious that the food security of the Colombian population, contrary to the position of the Uribe govern-


ment, cannot be subject to the importation of food and the undermining of traditional campesino activities. How can it be possible that, while in the countries of the first world food security is a matter of national security, while in Colombia the opposite path is followed?

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b l“¿Alimentos o gasolina?” (“Food or gasoline?”) • (2007), in Semana magazine, digital edition. See: http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.aspx?IdArt=106693

Álvarez Roa, Paula (2008), “La política del Gobier-• no colombiano en la promoción de los agrocombus-tibles” (“The policies of the Colombian Government in the promotion of biofuels”), in Semillas maga-zine, Bogotá. See: http://www.semillas.org.co/sitio.shtml?apc=d1c1--&x=20155553

Association of Dairy Farmers of Piedcuesta, San-• tander (2008), “Communiqué to public opinion”, Continental Movement of Christians and Christians for Peace webpage. See: http://www.cristianosporla-paz.info/?q=node/265

National Economic and Social Policy Council • (2007), “Conpes Social Document 113 – National Food Security and Nutritional Policy” (PSAN), Bo-gotá.

De Schutter, Olivier (2008), “Statement of the UN • Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food”, in FIAN International. Right to Food and Nutrition Watch, Germany.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lDNP (2003), “2002 – 2006 Development Plan: • Towards a Communitary State”, Bogotá.

______ (2007). “2006 – 2010 Development Plan. • Communitary State: Development for All”, Bogotá.

FAO (2006), “Directives of the Right to Food. Infor-• mative Documents and Case Studies”, Rome.

Grupo Semillas (2006), “Proyecto de Ley de Desar-• rollo Rural. Una contrarreforma agraria a la medida de la Ley de Justicia y Paz y para los inversionistas” (“The Rural Development Legislative Project: Agrar-ian Counterreform According to the Justice and Peace Law and for Investors”), Separata, Bogotá.

ICBF (2006), “National Survey on the Nutritional • Situation of Colombia, 2005”, Bogotá.

INCODER (2004), “Áreas de Desarrollo Agropecuar-• io y Rural. Marco conceptual, metodología, criterios de focalización y resultados” (“Areas for Agricultural and Rural Development. Conceptual Framework, Methodology, Focalisation and Results Criteria”), Bogotá, Ministry for Agriculture and Rural Develop-ment.

“La contrareforma agraria” (sic) (“Agrarian counter-• reform”) (2009), in El Espectador, digital edition, See: http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/editorial/articulo128034-contrarreforma-agraria

Ministry for Agriculture and Rural Development • (2006), “Apuesta Exportadora Agropecuaria 2006 – 2020” (“Plan for Agricultural Exportation 2006 – 2020”), See: http://www.corpoica.org.co/SitioWeb/Archivos/Publicaciones/APUESTAEXPORTADORA.pdf

Maya Villazón, Edgardo (2006), “Carta del Procura-• dor General de la Nación al Ministro de Agricultura Andrés Felipe Arias. Comentarios al Proyecto de Ley No. 30” (“Letter from the Comptroller General of the Nation to the Minister for Agriculture Andrés Felipe Arias. Commentaries on Legal Project No. 30”), in Grupo Semillas (2006), Bogotá.

Being a national problem, the food crisis particularly affects the female population:While 38.8% of Colombian homes with a male head of household suffer food insecurity, the figure ascends to 45.4 % if the head of the household is female.While the prevalence of anaemia among women of fertile age reaches the alarming figure of 32.8 %, that of pregnant women is 44.7%.Only 45.2% of Colombian women receive education on breastfeeding during their pregnancy. The prevalence of deficiency in the ingestion of proteins and energy among Colombian women is 42% and 68%, respectively (men 28.9 % and 58.8 %) (ICBF 2006: 205, 265, 348).

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lMartínez Torres, Hernán (2007), “La importancia de • los biocombustibles en Colombia” (“The Importance of Biofuels in Colombia”), Ministry for Mines and Energy, VI/07, powerpoint presentation. See: http://www.snc.gov.co/2007/presentaciones/bio/min_mi-nas.pdf

Molano Bravo, Alfredo (2009), “Las Pavas, crónica • de un desalojo” (Las Pavas: Chronicle of an Evic-tion”), en El Espectador, digital edition, See: http://www.elespectador.com/impreso/articuloimpre-so153956-pavas-cronica-de-un-desalojo

Morales González, Juan Carlos (2007), “Hambre y • derecho a la alimentación en Colombia” (“Hunger and the Right to Food in Colombia”), conference staged at the Roundtable on the Rights of the City, Javeriana University, Bogotá.

________ (2006), “El hambre al servicio del neo-• liberalismo” (“Hunger at the Service of Neoliberal-ism”), Bogotá, Desde Abajo editorial.

_________(2009), “Proceso alimentario, hambre y • conflictos” (“Food Process, Hunger and Conflicts”), conference staged at the roundtable: “Food and Nu-tritional Situation in Conflict Scenarios”, Food and Nutritional Security Observatory, National University of Colombia, Bogotá, June 2.

Colombian Platform for Human Rights, Democracy • and Development (2009), Alternative Report to the Committee of the ICESCR, “The State of the Right to Food in Colombia”. See: http://www.colombiasinpo-breza.org/documentos.shtml?x=20160687

“Surprise in Carimagua” (2008), in • Semana maga-

zine, digital edition, See: http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.aspx?idArt=113298


* Director, Ecofondo Corporation; Spokesman, Committee for the Promotion of a Referen-dum on the Human Right to Water in Co-lombia.

The human right to water, environmental crisis and social mobilisationRafael Colmenares Faccini*

The environmental crisis has deepened

The serious difficulties in gaining access to potable water faced by millions of people around the world, and particularly in Colombia, arise against the backdrop of the environmental crisis afflicting the planet as whole. This is being deepened and one of its most alarming consequences is climate change, which is one of the factors contributing to the reduction of drinkable water available.

The rise in the temperature of the Earth gives rise to serious distur-bances in hydrological cycles by accelerating, for example, evaporation, which in turn impedes the adequate replenishment of aquifers and reduc-es the amounts of water deposited in wetlands or circulating in rivers.

The XV United Nations Conference of Climate Change will take place in Copenhagen in December 2009, and the G8 countries have proposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, with the objective that the global temperature not rise by more than 2ºC in this century. However, Russia, Japan and Canada are opposed to such a drastic reduc-tion, while China, India and Brazil do not want to make any such com-mitment as they see in these measures a threat to their growing levels of development.

To illustrate the seriousness of the problem one need only mention that a rise of two degrees, the limit which it is hoped will not be exceeded, could lead to the extinction of 30% of the planet’s biodiversity, would effect the coastal wetlands and lead to the salinisation of river waters, due to the rise in sea levels. Cartagena, according to a recent World Bank report, could become an island due to the rise in sea levels. As a conse-quence, if the temperature goes up by more than two degrees it would provoke a catastrophe of unthinkable proportions (Natalichio 2009 and De la Torre [et al] 2009).

INDEX

140 The human right to water, environmental crisis and social mobilisation 141Break the spell or more of the same?

Colombia does not generate emissions of contami-nating gasses of the same proportion as developed countries, but it does contribute to high levels of defores-tation as a result of, among other causes, the continuing enlargement of the agrarian frontier which results from the landholding structure which expels people, pushing them towards this frontier, and thus encroaching on the tropical forests.

Colombia’s environmental policy weakens

While the problem worsens at the global level and de-forestation and contamination in Colombia grows, the country’s environmental policy has experienced serious backward movement.

An important understanding of this policy was rea-lised at the National Environmental Forum last year, when it marked the 15th anniversary of Law 99 of 1993, which created the Environment Ministry, later to become the “Environment, Housing and Territorial Development” Ministry. This understanding was published in the book “Governability, Institutionalism and Environment in Co-lombia” which was a compilation of works by various au-thors. The general conclusion was that, having designed an ambitious environmental system intended to achieve “sustainable development”, in the last seven years, un-der the two presidential terms of the Uribe administra-tion, this system has been weakened, almost to the point of being dismantled. In the words of Professor Julio Car-risoza, author of the book’s prologue, “the Colombian case is outstanding for the magnitude and coherence of what was attempted, and the speed with which it was weakened …” (Rodríguez Becerra 2008).

The aforementioned is not unrelated to the policy of “investor confidence” of the current government, which removes any obstacle to the goal of attracting capital, especially from the transnationals, which tend to see in environmental controls a barrier to be knocked down. Proof of this is in the growing elimination of the envi-ronmental licence for numerous activities which generate risks in this regard.

The weakening previously described has been con-cominant with sectoral environmental policies, among which the following should be briefly mentioned:

(1) The forestry policy, designed to facilitate exploita-tion of wood in tropical forests and its substitution with commercial plantations. In developing this policy, the “Forestry Law” was issued, which was promptly declared unenforceable by the Constitu-tional Court (Ruling C 30 of 2008), but whose fun-damental objectives continue to be pursued under current norms.

(2) The policy of promotion of biofuels, carried for-ward through Law 693 of 2001, and more recently by Conpes 3510 of March 2008. This policy will lead to the substitution of crops intended for the production of foods, with others intended for the generation of fuels. Eventually, it will also affect the tropical forests. The scientist Peter Bunyard criti-cised this policy for its inefficiency as an alternative to fossil fuels and drew attention to the huge de-mand for water generated by the African palm and sugar cane plantations (National Environmental Fo-rum 2008). The former minister Manuel Rodriguez made the same criticisms (2008). Diverse analysts and experts agree that this initiative will lead to a loss of biological diversity in exchange for scarce and even contradictory results in terms of reduc-tions in greenhouse gasses. It will, however, be an excellent business for the national and internation-al capital involved.

(3) The mining policy facilitates the enlargement of this activity in the county, carried out fundamen-tally by transnational companies. Mining licences have been granted for 65,176 hectares of uplands and applications are being processed for 400,000 hectares more, which represents 36% of Colom-bia’s total uplands. These constitute essential eco-systems for the hydrological cycle of the national territory. It must be recognised that the modifica-tions approved by the Mining Code (Law 685 of 2001) which the legislature has recently finished, exclude uplands from mining exploitation. How-ever, the debate over “rights aquired” in relation to the licences already granted, and even those that are still being processed, will no doubt come. The aforementioned modifications to the Mining Code included authorisation for dredging for the extrac-tion of minerals from rivers, a technique which is

prohibited, and eliminated environmental licences for exploratory mining, thereby seriously attacking the country’s hydric cycle.

(4) The energy policy, which is based on the construc-tion of huge hydroelectric megaprojects. These involve the construction of large reservoirs and form part of the so-called “National Competitiv-ity and Productivity Policy”, which is contained in the National Political Economic and Social Council document – Conpes No. 3527 of 2008. This strat-egy carried forward the construction of reservoirs such as El Quimbo in Magdalena, Hidrosogamoso, on the Sogamoso River and various reservoirs in the Sierra Nevada and Santa Marta areas, among oth-ers. These undertakings have been driven forward with very little information being made available to the citizenry and the affected populations. Howev-er, in as far as there is awareness, their implications have generated a very widespread rejection from both the public and diverse social sectors, among them academia. In Colombia the Urrá reservoir of-fers a typical example of the negative effects suf-fered by the environment and indigenous cultures, along with fishing and campesino communities, as a result of such infrastructural projects.

With respect to the Canadian thinker and activist Maude Barlow, who dedicated her book “The Blue Bear” to the memory of indigenous leader Kimy Pernia Domicó, who was disappeared by paramilitary forces because of his fight against the Urrá reservoir and his defense of the Embera Katio people of Alto Sinú, emphasises four se-riously negative consequences of large reservoirs: mer-cury poisoning which accumulates in organisms such as fish due to a process provoked by the decomposition of vegetation in the flooded areas; the rise of the green-house effect due to the generation of enormous quanti-ties of carbon dioxide and methane, resulting from the previously mentioned decomposition of vegetation; the deformation of the earth’s crust due to the weight of the accumulated water, which can lead to earthquakes; and, finally the impact on local ecosystems caused by the loss of species of fish which form the base of lo-cal communities’ diets. Barlow finishes her criticism of these developmentalist enterprises with the following succinct criticism: “On the other side are blind and mal-

intentioned governments and the impresario enthusiasm which join forces and step up their pace to achieve a common objective: poison and waste the water. In the end, governments and businesses will pay a high price for it. But, in the meantime, many private citizens are suffering the consequences of this policy with respect to water.” (Barlow and Clark 2004).

The policy of commodification and privatisation of water in Colombia

For some time now, the Colombian government has pur-sued an aggressive policy of commodification and priva-tisation of water services and sewage infrastructure, with projections for increasing control of water sources in Co-lombia, which is the seventh largest freshwater reserve in the world. This transformation comes against the geopo-litical backdrop of growing scarcity of water principally affecting the first world

South America is the region of the world with the greatest reserves of freshwater, with 28.3% of the total, as compared to 26.8% in East and Southeast Asia and 15.2% in North America. Colombia, with 50,635 m3 per inhabitant per year is the seventh largest freshwater re-serve on the planet, while Brazil is the first. While the great majority of South American countries are reaffirm-ing the national sovereignty of their territories, and re-covering control of their natural resources, in Colombia neoliberal policies of privatisation persist. Thanks to its wealth in water and thanks to its policies of “investor confidence”, it should come as no surprise that transna-tionals that mercantilise water, having been driven out of other South American countries, have taken refuge in Colombia. Opening public services to private investment was first made possible by the 1991 Constitution and through Law 142/93, which led to 32% of the businesses that supply water and sewage works having some level of private investment (9% mixed and 23% private), much of it transnational capital, with Suez, Vivendi, Aguas de Barcelona and Tecvasa being the best known. These companies operate in the country’s major cities and the majority of the population depends on them.

Thanks to these changes, which not only allow the provision of said services by private operators, but also demand that all providers, be they public, private or


mixed, make a profit, and therefore transfer all of their direct and indirect costs to the users, the rates charged for water and sewage works have risen considerably. For example, between 1998 and 2008 the index of consumer prices for the sector (IPC) rose by 200%, while general inflation was 92%.

This rise had a much greater impact on the poor population than on those with higher earnings: while the former suffered a rise of 300% in their bills over the last decade, for the latter the increase was 132%. This reality shows that in Colombia the poorest 20% spends 8% of its earnings on water charges, a figure which when compared to the corresponding statistics for Guatemala (2.5%), Peru (4%) and Mexico and Paraguay (both 6%), is exceptional. By virtue of this situation, some 400,000 us-ers are, on average, excluded from the service each year. This corresponds to 1.6 million people, including: 236,000 in Bogotá, 60,000 in Medellín, 15,000 in Cartagena.1

This shameful situation, as stated by experts Aurelio Suárez and Iván Cardona, “contrasts with the margins of utility and profitability of the companies in the sector. For example, the margin of EBITDA (Earnings Before In-terest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) on income, in the water and sewage sector reaches 40%, equivalent to $1.2 billion per year; the profitability of assets is 8%, while liquidity (current assets and liabilities) is 3.3% (SSPD 2007b) (ECOFONDO ).

Adjustments to charges still do not reach the major-ity of municipalities, though most of the urban popula-tion does receive them. 85% of the operators who serve communities of 100,000 or more are private or mixed.

Despite this, the majority of advances in cover are still supported by public investment. While private invest-ment in infrastructure for the sector was only $160 billion per annum between 1995 and 2003, public investment reached $900 billion per year (DNP 2005). Between 2003 and 2006, the sector’s resources reached $7.3 billion,

1 According to a survey carried out by the National Con-sultancy Centre for the Public Services Superintendency (SSPD), on average 7% of users had services suspended for non-payment (SSPD 2006).

stemming from the following public sources: 42% from the General Participation System, 11% from the National Budget (PGN), 16% from royalties, and 31% from charges (SSPD 2008c)

In the departmental capitals, as opposed to the ma-jor cities, real coverage is 66%, and in the remaining mu-nicipal capitals it is 30.5%, according to the results of the 2003 Quality of Life study. On the environmental level, the volume of residual waters that receive treatment barely reaches 8%, while 50% of municipalities do not have landfills, instead disposing of waste in open sites, with some still depositing waste directly into rivers, ac-cording to a report presented by the Public Defender in 2007. Added to this, 838 of the 951 municipal capitals analysed by the Defender did not supply water suitable for human consumption (88%) and the average rate of un-billed water was 45%.

In accordance with the “Complementary Diagnostic on the Human Right to Water in Colombia”, a document published by the Public Defender in April 2009, some 9,022,276 people have no access to water services and 13,541,532 have no access to a proper sewage system. There are also great disparities, given that in the 17 mu-nicipalities corresponding to the major cities, water ser-vices and sewage services reach 95% of the population, while there are 222 municipalities where water cover does not reach 30% and 593 municipalities which suffer equally poor levels of sewage works coverage.

The “solution” designed by the national government to change this situation are the so-called “”Departmental Water Plans”, which follow the same logic of commodifi-cation and privatisation of services that has led to the results examined above. One study of these plans, car-ried out for the National Environmental Forum by experts Aurelio Suárez and Iván Cardona, reveals the serious im-plications for the country, and the inefficiency of this ap-proach in resolving the problems of access to potable water among the currently excluded population. Accord-ing to the authors, these plans:

…are designed within the market model of water as a busi-ness, that is to say, with the slant of imposing profitability and the earnings expected by various agents involved in the process, trustees, with a commission equivalent to 5% of

the resources administrated; operators, who maintain an internal rate of return of 12%-15%, managers and others, limit the reach of the purposes initially proposed (Suárez y Cardona 2009).

According to the same authors, there is a gap of 1.7 billion pesos between predicted investment from private operators for the first four years of the plan, which can-not be resolved without a rise in charges which will have to be paid for by users, in municipalities with scarce re-sources. The plans imply a serious debt to the Multilater-al Bank, the interests of which will be close to 50% of the capital loaned, implying the hypothecation of transfers from the general system of participation to the munici-palities.

Potable water and the human right to water

In accordance with its policy of commodification of wa-ter, it is not surprising that the current Colombian gov-ernment has radically opposed the consecration in the Constitution of the fundamental human right to potable water. This is so despite the recognition of this right in numerous rulings made by the Constitutional Court in resolving disputes which have arisen as a result of the exclusion of Colombian from water and sewage services.

This opposition from the national government was evident in debates held in the First Commission of the Chamber of Representatives, carried out early last year, when calls for a referendum on the human right to water were being considered.

Amidst all this, and the lack of potable water which affects millions of people around the world, the fight for the recognition of this right has been moving forward at the international level. General Observation 15 of the Committee of the International Convention of Eco-nomic, Social and Cultural Rights, issued in 2002, argues that this right is implicitly contained in Article 11 of the Convention: “The right of every person to an adequate standard of life for themself and their family”, and Article 12, which states “the right to enjoy the highest level of physical and mental health”.2

2 The aforementioned Observation 15, after affirming that water “is a limited natural resource and a public good for

In November 2006 the Human Rights Council of the United Nations requested that the Office of the High Com-missioner for Human Rights produce a detailed report on the reach and content of states’ obligations in relation to equitative access to potable water and hygiene. Follow-ing a process of consultation the report was presented and, on 16 August 2007, the Council issued Resolution A/HRC/6/3 which, in its conclusions, states: “The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that the moment has come to consider access to po-table water and hygiene as a human right.” Afterwards, on 28 March 2008, the same Council, through Resolution A/HRC/7 decided to create the position of “independent expert” on the issue, The Portuguese lawyer Catarina de Alburquerque was later designated as this expert and made her first report on 25 February 2009, in which she expressed her concern that lack of access to potable wa-ter caused the deaths of 1.6 million people per year and 5,000 children under the age of five each day.

This year we have seen an intensification of the fight for recognition of the human right to water as a funda-mental right. One of the most important events in this regard was the V World Water Forum staged in Istanbul, Turkey, last March.

The World Water Fora are organised by the World Water Council, a “lobby” of transnationals which consid-ers access to water to be a need which can be satisfied through the mechanisms of the market and which de-nies its character as a fundamental human right which, it must be acknowledged, would alter the favourable con-ditions which currently exist for the profitable business of supplying water. The confrontation between these two standpoints arose again, but on this occasion the ten-dency towards recognition as a right was reinforced by the message of the President of the UN Assembly, Miguel D’Escotto, which was read out by his principal advisor on the issue of water, the Canadian activist Maude Barlow. The message is categorical in affirming:

“I am convinced that we must reject the idea that water is a merchandise that can be bought and sold in the free

life and health”, defines the human right to water as: “the right of all to have access to sufficient, healthy, acces-sible, usable water for personal and domestic use”.


market. We must act quickly in order that potable water be treated as a fundamental human right of all peoples and that it be included in the United Nations objectives” (D´Escotto 2009).

D’Escotto also questioned the organisation of world water fora, affirming:

“It is evident that the current World Water Forum does not share the opinions widely held against the privatisation of water and in favour of avoiding its commodification. I agree that in the coming fora international norms should be ad-opted and deliberations should be carried out under the auspices of the United Nations. I call on the member states of the Organisation to work together to promote policies to make it possible for the forum to come together in confor-mity with the well-developed methodologies we have for these types of meetings. These policies should be put into practice before the celebration of the Sixth World Water Forum” (D´Escotto 2009).

In the end, the pressure of powerful governments such as the United States and Brazil predominated in Is-tanbul, blocking the appearance of the human right to water in the official declaration, but the alternative state-ment in its favour received the signatures of 25 govern-ments, mostly Latin American, along with two European states. Cuba, Venezuela, Uruguay and Bolivia, which had made a similar alternative declaration four years earlier in Mexico, received the backing of 21 new signatories.

The water referendum

In Colombia a wide spectrum of social organisations, grouped together in the National Committee for the De-fense of Water and Life,3 took the decision to seek a con-stitutional reform which would establish a new principle for the management of water, recognising its character as essential for life, which would make it a common and, as such, public good as indicated in General Observa-tion 15 of the ESCR Committee, which states that water

3 This Committee, created on 23 February 2007 by 60 organisations from all around the country, is the driv-ing force behind the referendum initiative. Some 1,200 organisations from all around the country are linked to the Committee, and are organised into Territorial Commit-tees.

“should be treated as a social and cultural good, and fun-damentally as an economic good”. The other axis of the proposal was the recognition of the fundamental human right to potable water. In order to guarantee this right it is proposed to establish a free vital minimum. Gratuity only comprehends this minimum and, as a consequence, it is only beyond this minimum that persons should have to pay for the water they consume. The viability of this proposal implies a change in the current system, accord-ing to which users take on the direct and indirect costs of water and sewerage works, and implies a large contribu-tion from the state.

A fundamental issue in order to guarantee present and future generations the satisfaction of their basic needs is territorial reordering. Various articles of the Co-lombian Constitution make reference to this issue and, in particular, Article 80 supports the appropriate planning of natural resources. An environmental interpretation of this mandate, in relation to the water problem, would suggest proposing destination criteria for the essential ecosystems in the water cycle. These must be primarily dedicated to guaranteeing the functioning of said cycle. Conserving and recovering these ecosystems, and direct-ing them to the end that nature assigned them, is an in-dispensable measure with regard to the environmental sustainability of Colombia. It must be remembered that one of the causes of the deterioration of Colombian hy-dric potential, identified by the National Water Strategy 12 years ago, is the way Colombia’s territory has been occupied contravening the logic of its ecosystems.

The proposal also address political and social organi-sation, as this will be necessary to satisfy a basic need. Only from a democratic and participative framework will it be possible for water management to be guided by environmental principles. From this perspective, the privatisation of the management of water, in any of its modalities, is antidemocratic as, in essence, it leads to the delivery of a common good, which should be man-aged by all, into the hands of a few. In this sense it is sug-gested that the water and sewerage systems be delivered exclusively and without delegation by the state, through entities guided by the criteria of social efficiency, trans-parency, citizens’ participation and social control.

Equally, the public arena should be enlarged, in that it is suggested this should not consist solely of state en-tities, but should also involve the community. Colombia is an example of communitary management of water, on which at least 25% of the population depends, with community water infrastructure meriting state support to improve the quality of water it supplies, which is all too often affected by contamination from supply sources.

On another note, recognition of the collective prop-erty of indigenous and afrodescendent communities, reinforced firstly in the 1991 Constitution and later rec-ognised on the basis of the Constitution, should explicitly include the waters which flow through them. The neolib-eral tendency to split territories up must be confronted according to principles such as the integrity of collective territories. This does not conflict with the character of water as a public good, given that, as is well-known, the existence of such territories is conducive to the appro-priate use of water for the good of the Colombian na-tion as a whole. Simultaneously, in the paragraph which is suggested as a complement to Article 63 of the Con-stitution, the legal existence of public goods which form part of the water cycle - such as reservoirs, riverbeds, areas for the protection of currents, beaches, wetlands etc - which become less vulnerable when they are given constitutional status, is made explicit.

The cultural value of water and its sacred charac-ter for many of the cultures which exist in the country is equally recognised. Large sectors of Colombian so-ciety are starting to become conscious of other world views which do not separate human beings from nature and, as a consequence, do not adopt an instrumental and utilitarian approach to the beings and elements that compose it. Such is the case of indigenous communities which, in their myths and legends, and their daily lives, express this communion.

Finally, the proposal has an evident ethical sense in proposing not only the explicit establishment of a right but also the recognition of responsible management for the welfare of other living beings, with future generations and the whole of nature taken into consideration. This ethical reach is also esthetic, as it values the work of na-ture in its beauty and splendour, which is today under threat and partially destroyed by the logic of “develop-

ment”. In the words of Riechmann: “We cannot continue to maintain the mentality of the cowboy – arrive, exploit, leave – in a full world where frontiers have already been reached, which is heading for seven billion inhabitants. We must learn to look after the Earth, treating her at times with the love of a gardener, sometimes with the reverence of a Buddhist hermit, sometimes with a sense of Franciscan brotherhood, and on other occasions with admiration of the Indians of the Great Plains” ( Riech-mann 2004: 246).4

We set out seeing the essentiality of water for life as a basic principle and, as a consequence, the right of access to it as something fundamental. However, what makes it relevant and opportune to suggest this right is not just the previous affirmation, but the irrefutable fact of its denial to large sectors of the population, not just in Colombia but all over the so-called “third world”.

The aforementioned proposal received the support of more than two million Colombian citizens, constitut-ing the largest number of people in the world who have pronounced their support for the human right to water through this mechanism. The collection of their signa-tures in the six months from 13 March to 13 Septem-ber 2008 provoked a wide debate on the different issues related to access to water and its protection, with nu-merous national, regional and local fora, and even the navigation of 5,000 kilometers of the Rivers Magdalena, Atrato, Cauca, Bogotá, Amazonas and Meta, to their mouths in the Orinoco. Through these journeys contact was established with traditionally marginalised commu-nities suffering precarious access to safe potable water.

Currently, the call for a referendum in which the peo-ple decide on the proposal to include the fundamental human right to potable water in the Colombian Consti-tution, and the other aspects previously described, are being considered in Congress where they have been met with stiff opposition from the government. The govern-ment’s bench has introduced substantial modifications which strip the proposal of its virtues and place it at the

4 Riechmann, Jorge., “Gente que no quiere viajar a Marte” (“People who don’t want to go to Mars”), Los libros de la Catarata, Madrid, 2004, p. 246


service of its policies. However, the appeal lodged by the Promotion Committee was accepted and the argument over the original text has been retaken by the Fifth Com-mission of the Chamber of Representatives, initiated in the legislature on 20 July 2009. At the time of writing the future of the initiative is unpredictable. However, the na-tional and international support which it has received, and the movement which this has stimulated, will ensure the fight for the human right to water continues beyond the final outcome of this referendum.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lBarlow, Maude and Clark, Tony (2004), “El Oro • Azul” (“The Blue Gold”), Buenos Aires, Paidós

D´Escotto, Miguel, “Declaración del Presidente de • la Asamblea General de las Naciones Unidas en el Quinto Foro Mundial del Agua, presentada por Maude Barlow, Asesora principal del Presidente sobre el agua” (2009) (“Declaration of the President of the United Nations General Assembly in the Fifth World Water Forum, Presented by Maude Barlow, Principal Advisor to the President on Water”), Istan-bul, United Nations, See: http://www.un.org/span-ish/aboutun

De la Torre, Augusto et al (2009), “Desarrollo con • menos carbono: respuestas latinoamericanas al desafío del cambio climático” (“Development With Less Carbon: Latin American Responses to the Chal-lenge of Cimate Change”), Washington, D.C, World Bank, See: http://siteresources.worldbank.org

National Environmental Forum (2008) “La dimen-• sión ambiental del Conpes de biocombustibles. Ayuda de Memoria” (“The Environmental Dimension of Conpes of Biofuels”), See: http://www.foronacio-nalambiental.org.co

Natalichio, Ricardo, “El cambio climático y sus con-• secuencias” (“Climate Change and its Consequenc-es”) (2009), available at: www.ecoportal.net

Pérez, Carlos A, et al, “Evidencias de cambio • climático en Colombia: tendencias y cambios de fase y amplitud de los ciclos anuales y semianuales” (“Evidence of Climate Change in Colombia: Tenden-cies and Changes of Stage and Amplitude of Annual and Semi-Annual Cycles”), See: www.unesco.org.uy

Riechmann, Jorge (2004), Gente que no quiere via-• jar a Marte (“People Who Don’t Want To Travel To Mars”), Madrid, Catarata Books.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lRodríguez Becerra, Manuel (ed) (2008), Gobernabil-• idad, instituciones y medio ambiente en Colombia” (“Governability, Institutions and Environment in Co-lombia”), Bogotá, National Environmental Forum.

Rodríguez Becerra, Manuel, “Biocombustibles al • banquillo” (“Biofuels on the Bench”) (2008), El

Tiempo newspaper.

Suárez, Aurelio and Cardona, Iván (2009), “Análisis • de los Planes Departamentales de Agua” (“Analysis of the Departmental Plans for Water”), in Bulletin No. 30 (April - May 2009), See: www.ecofondo.org


* ENDA América Latina

Commodifying public goods: deepening exclusion and poverty An analysis of waste management policy during the Álvaro Uribe governmentFederico Parra

Introduction

This document aims to present, through a case study of public waste management policies during the 2002–2009 period, the current govern-ment’s tendency to consolidate a mercantilist version of public service provision, which strengthens the position of private companies that pro-vide public services, while also prejudicing the rights of citizens-service users. It will also show that popular sectors, which depend on intimately related economic activities, are particularly affected.

The commodification of public services and the mafiosi culture

Traditionally public policies have been influenced by pressure groups or coalitions. These, according to Sabatier (2003), are made up of actors from a variety of public and private institutions, at different levels of gov-ernment, who share a basic framework of beliefs and seek to manipulate the rules, budgets and personnel of governmental institutions in order to achieve their goals within the timeframes hoped for: they operate in a subsystem of public policy. If we can affirm that many political subsys-tems are made up of, and dominated by, political elites, it must be under-lined that in the case of waste management policies in Colombia, there is a marked influence from transnational and national economic groups. Their action manifests in the trend of commoditisation of public services and its immediate effect, as stated, principally affects popular sectors and lower strata of society, in their condition as customers (rather than users) of public services: as a consequence their fundamental rights, with regard to their intermediary needs (food, potable water, adequate hous-ing, health care, education, etc) are affected.

In the face of the mercantilisation of public services in the country, Varela (2002) identifies the creation of the 1991 Constitution as the mo-

INDEX

150 Commodifying public goods: deepening exclusion and poverty 151Break the spell or more of the same?

ment while allowed the inclusion of profoundly neolib-eral alignments in the public policies of Colombia.1 The same author recognises that the mercantilisation of pub-lic services is exemplified in the provision of so-called “Domiciled Public Services”, among which is the public hygiene services which have usually been administered by the municipalities and the departments; these have been radically transformed by legislation which has intro-duced regulated market criteria into the sector.

Simultaneously, waste management systems in Co-lombia have historically been permeated by a mafiosi culture which, as is well explained by Mejía (2008), in-filtrates society, institutions and the economy, in which groups on the margins of the law – illicit economies and clientelistic logic – converge. In concrete, in the absence of a formal, national policy to organise the management of waste, local governments have washed their hands of the problem, often leaving all aspects of the issue in the hands of informal economic sectors, often linked to lo-cal and national mafias, systems which also serve for the circulation of illicit goods and services such as drugs and stolen goods.

Very recently, from 1990, interest in the public man-agement of waste has returned, thanks to the percep-tion of profitability which is attributed to processes of exploitation and the high costs which poor manage-ment has implied for the state. From a perspective of efficient public management, models of private manage-ment have been followed, which emulate possible market scenarios and “appropriate” the profitability that derives from them. On some occasions, this has led to competi-

1 “…it is symptomatic that the issue of Political Charter of 1991 has been driven by an economic and political team headed up by former Secretary General of the OAS, ex-President Cesar Gaviria Trujillo, who was very aligned to the orthodoxy of neoliberal economics. It was these same designers of public policy who introduced, both in the Constitution and later legal developments, the ele-ments of mercantilisation of public services, according to the New Public Administration, and the aforementioned neoliberal orthodoxy, and supposedly overcome. Although seen in retrospect what has occured is a process of rhe-torical cover-up of ideological and doctrinal positions. (Varela 2002, 4).

tion with local mafias, while on others it has facilitated the “legalisation” of such organisation as “formal” actors involved in the public hygiene services.

Both informal mafias and business monopolies which control the rights to profit from waste management (of-ten deeply enmeshed), justify themselves by pointing to the lacking reach of state efforts, and dependence on legal or illegal private interests, which in turn leads to the loss of legitimacy, representativeness, functionality and institutionality of the state. Oscar Mejía affirms that “…the loss of these factors has clearly impacted in the sup-plantation of the state by powerful private actors which caused the definitive rupture of norms of coexistence in relations between citizens and the state. This alone (has produced) a profound rupture in the social fabric, bringing as a consequence the subdivision, privatisation and utilisation of the state, manifesting in loss of morale in society amidst multiple forms of rupture in citizenry coexistence, causing the filtration of illegality into all social, political and economic spheres, resulting in the construction of a mafiosi state” (Mejía 2008)

As a consequence of these two tendencies, the mercantilisation of public services associated with pow-erful private actors, has been reaffirmed in the govern-ment of Álvaro Uribe Vélez as in no other, through the strengthening of the image of the public-state linked to private concessions, ceding social functions of the state to the market. And it is reiterated that in the area of public policy concerning waste management, models of concession-based public service provision have been systematically favoured, but still more serious is the per-secution suffered by the recycling community, thanks to the privatisation of exploitation of waste.

Herewith we will present an analytical narrative of the waste management policy, which has been marked by pri-vatisation of exploitation and the exclusion of informal recyclers: we will make visible the rights which have been prejudiced and the resistance that has been demonstrat-ed by these populations, setting out from the premise that the few policies in favour of the recycling population have been won by the organised recyclers’ movement, through judicial and legal actions and social mobilisa-tion. We will continue with the framework suggested by the new model of public service provision derived from

Resolution 351 of the Regulatory Commission for Potable Water (CRA), the impacts of the Law of Environmental Summonses and the appearance of new actors in the economic system of recycling, such as Residuos Ecoefi-ciencia S.A.

A brief introduction to the recycling population

Before beginning the analysis of waste management pol-icy and its impacts, it is necessary to briefly characterise the recycling population, as it is they who have suffered more than anyone else through the detriment of their living conditions due to public decisions associated with the policies in question.

For more than 60 years a growing social sector in the country’s urban areas has been composed of the un-employed, the displaced, those in extreme poverty and those living in misery. Many of these people have taken to scouring the streets, searching among the bags of rub-bish abandoned in public spaces, to recover any materi-als with potential to be used in the informal and formal recycling sectors.

It is thus that these urban nomads extract, classify and recover aluminium cans, paper, card, diverse types of plastic, scrap and innumerable disposable products thrown away by the inhabitants of the city. They do their work with makeshift transport, like old sacks, shopping carts, tricycles and two-wheeled trolleys. They also use animal-powered carts. They scour the length and breadth of the city in search of recyclable materials, which once obtained, in the best quality and greatest quantity they can manage, are taken to a recycling centre for commer-cialisation.

Thanks to this work they obtain the resources neces-sary for their survival, and at the same time they continue the economic process which sustains higher levels of the system: up to four intermediary stages, the recycling industry and the industries that use these materials as primary inputs. It is worth stating that this activity, as an informal component of the recycling economy, does not enjoy any type of labour protection; workers are not paid for their labour, but for the weight of material collected, and the recyclable materials market is one of the most unstable.

The recycling population is permanently exposed to infections, injuries, abuse and other issues such as social discrimination, police harassment and legal persecution. Recently, through Ruling T- 291 of 20092, the Colombian Constitutional Court underlined the vulnerability of this sector of the population, stating:;

“a large part of the recyclers of Colombia – both those that work in dumps, and the so-called street recyclers – live in conditions of extreme poverty, marked by high levels of exclusion and discrimination. This is a population which has turned to informal recycling due to the impossibility of finding other means of subsistence. (…)

Society rejects rubbish and extends said rejection to those that work with it. For this reason, there are a predominant series of stereotypes that culminate in defining recyclers as the lowest level of society and generating a vision of them as irritating, foul-smelling people who steal, block traffic and dirty the city. The prejudices against recyclers are of such magnitude that they have arrived at the point of carrying forward campaigns of “social cleansing” to “get rid” of them.3

One aspect that cannot go unattended with regard to the situation of marginalisation which recyclers are subjected to, concerns the invisibility of their work in terms of so-cial utility. The activity they have for years carried out, has brought unarguable benefits to society, by having mitigated, to a significant extent, the environmental effects generated by the indiscriminate processes of industrialisation and ur-ban sprawl. But far from being valued, every day they are made invisible and they are excluded from possibilities to participate in the market they know.”

Despite these hard conditions, and in the face of the growing lack of work opportunities in our society, popular recycling has become the last chance of “dignified” work for large marginalised sectors of the city. As a response, and despite the previously described conditions, various recycling individuals and families that share the same lo-cality, began at the beginning of the 1980s and with the

2 Constitutional Court, Ruling T- 291 of 2009, 23 April 2009, M.P. Clara Elena Reales Gutiérrez

3 In the same sense the UN Evironment, Social and Cultural Rights Committee made declarations in E/C.12/1995/12, 28 December 1995, par.12.


backing of various non-governmental organisations, an organisational process that is today described as the re-cycling association. Their consolidation has been marked by a constant fight for recognition, for the improvement of their working conditions and the battle against exclu-sion by the government and society in general.

National Decree 1713 of 2002: tension over the ownership of waste.

In Colombia public waste management policy has been marked by two situations: firstly, the emergence of rules that mitigate the environmental impacts caused by a lack of foresight. Secondly, it has been characterised by the imprint left from precedents in Bogotá – that is to say, public waste management policies in Bogotá have im-pacted trends at the national level.

When Álvaro Uribe Vélez arrived to the Presidency of the Republic, his predecessor had recently signed Decree 1713 of 2002. This regulation paved the way for further laws regarding the provision of public hygiene services and the management of solid wastes.

This decree was motivated, along with others, by the need to unify concepts, postures and operations regarding the issue, and the need to prevent national environmental and economic problems derived from the management of waste in Bogotá. In particular, those problems produced by the collapse of more than a mil-lion tonnes of waste from the landfill site of Doña Juana in 1997. It must be recognised that this decree brought about important advances in the creation of a shared vision of public solid waste management, while also generating a conceptual framework and regulating the different processes that make up the public hygiene service: collection, transport, sweeping and cleaning of roads and public areas, grass cutting and maintenance of trees in public areas, along with the cleaning of public ar-eas, transfer, treatment, exploitation and final disposal. Perhaps the most unsettling aspect4 was the inclusion of

4 We characterise as unsettling, thus far and since the 1950s, activities of exploitation such as the recovery of recyclable solid waste, reuse and recycling carried out in “paralell” or in conflict with the public hygiene services,

exploitation within the system of public waste manage-ment.

This inclusion was supported by recognition of the economic potential of this activity, and the generation of a singular expectation of recycling and its capacity to resolve the problem of the short useful life of final dis-posal sites. It is interesting that in the articulation of the decree it is recognised that recyclers’ organisations can be service providers when it affirms that this capacity is open to: “natural or juridical persons who produce for themselves or as a complement to their principal activity, the goods and services related to the use and revalua-tion of waste, such as organisations, cooperatives and recyclers’ associations, in the terms established by the current legislation”.

Lamentably what was given with the left hand was taken back with the right, through Article 28 of the same decree which refers to the ownership of waste, and which materialises one of the most complex conflicts thus far in this arena.

In said article ownership of solid waste in public ar-eas is defined in the following manner:

“All users of public waste services, cede the ownership of waste presented to the Municipality or the District, as the case may be, in the moment of placing them in the public site established for the respective collection. Unless the territorial entity determines otherwise, it is understood that said entity cedes the property to the person who provides the hygiene service or the complementary activity” (Decree 1713 of 2002).

The granting of ownership of waste to companies providing public hygiene services automatically allows the action of recovering recyclable waste by the recycling population to be interpreted as theft by the municipality, in the first instance, and by the service providing compa-ny, in the second instance. In this way the rights to work, to free development of personality and to the minimum needs of the recycling population have been violated. For these reasons said legal article was challenged by the Association of Recyclers of Bogotá and, after they won

and some of its strata which were in the hands of the aforementioned mafias.

this action, the national government was obliged to is-sue Regulatory Decree 1505 of 2003. This included mea-sures to mitigate the exclusion that not only this article, but also others apart from Decree 1713, represented for the recycling population. It is thus that Article 10 repeals dispositions to the contrary, especially the definition of exploitation or usage of wastes consecrated in Article 1 and Article 28 of Decree 1713 of 2002.

Article 8 also includes assurances for the participa-tion of recyclers thus:

“The Municipalities and the Districts assure in the mea-sure that it is possible the participation of recyclers in the activities of exploitation of solid waste. Once programmes of exploitation evaluated as viable and sustainable by the PGIRS are formulated, implemented and entered into ex-ecution, it will be understood that exploitation will have to be executed in the framework of said programmes. Until such time as these plans are elaborated and developed, the service will be provided in harmony with the programmes defined by the territorial entity for this end” (Regulatory Decree 1005 2003).

This was acknowledged by Ruling C-741 of 2003 in the Honourable Constitutional Court, in which it is inter-preted that “the organisations and cooperatives of recy-clers, as non-profit entities and representative vehicles for inclusion, must be understood as authorised by the legislator as also being persons providing public servic-es,” despite the fact that Law 142 of 1994, in Article 15, restricts the participation of the recycling population in the provision of public hygiene services to smaller mu-nicipalities.

Nonetheless, despite the ruling of the Constitutional Court, the Council of State simultaneously issued anoth-er ruling,5 which ratified the ownership of waste in the hands of the municipalities of the companies engaged in provision of public hygiene services. It even affirms that “… when the municipality contracts a firm for the provi-sion of public rubbish services, it is understood that this covers not only the collection of the waste, but also the complementary activities, from which it flows logically

5 Council of State, Ruling CE SP E00032 of 2003, 13 No-vember 2003, M.P. Olga Inés Navarrete Barrero

that the ownership of the exploitable and non-exploit-able waste is transferred to the company”.

This tension between different directives has justi-fied the evasive responses of the current government in the face of the threat posed by the Law of Environmental Summonses, as we will see herewith. Furthermore, it has protected some of the local groups which, through their influence in municipal governments, have continued in the provision of various components of public hygiene services and now with their exploitation.

It might be said that with this battle won, the recycling population was left well-positioned before the future of waste management in the country, but only six months after the ruling, the provision of public hygiene in Bogotá was put out to tender, ignoring the agreements put in place between the recycling sector and the national gov-ernment through the then-Minister for the Environment, in the National Recycling Congress which took place in Carmen de Viboral, Antioquia in 2003.

The tendering process and its results generated a damaging national precedent for the recycling popula-tion, as the conditions of experience, capital, knowl-edge and time management created requirements which “practically only the current operators could meet”.6 It was thus assured that the tenders for the provision of public hygiene services would go to private consortiums, despite the attempts of the recyclers to position them-selves in the future of waste management in the city.

These tenders, furthermore, delivered to such hy-giene service providing firms the official right to collect recycling, and carry out prior separation at the source, through what is known as the selective collection route. Thus the fundamental right to equality, and to work, was violated.

Actions in defense of the right to word of the recycling population

The recyclers’ organisations did not sit with their arms crossed as they saw how the means and activities

6 Constitutional Court. Ruling T-724 of 2003, 20 August 2003, M.P. Jaime Araujo Rentería


through which they made their living were handed over to the large hygiene services companies. The new As-sociation of Recyclers of Bogotá intervened with a pro-tection writ against the district government and against said tender, and after losing in two judicial hearings, their appeal arrived at the Constitutional Court which, in a fa-vourable response for the recycling populations, issued Ruling T-724 of 2003.

Lamentably the contracts with the consortia had al-ready been signed, which meant the problems outlined in the writ were seen as facts which could not be rem-edied. Nonetheless, the Constitutional Court conceded the protection of the fundamental rights to due process, to equality and to work of the recycling population. To this end, it judged that the entity charged with the is-sue at the district level, in this case the “Public Services Executive for Bogotá District Capital, or the district en-tity that performs its tasks, should on future occasions include affirmative actions7 in favour of the recyclers of Bogotá, whenever dealing with the contracting of pub-lic hygiene services, as the activity that they carry out is linked to said service. This was intended to help in achieving conditions of real equality and meeting the so-cial responsibilities of the state. Under no circumstances should it revert to the omissions included in Tender No. 01 of 2002, with regard to the recyclers of Bogotá”.8 It should be underlined that this ruling also has a national application. In other words, it has become an instrument in the fight for the inclusion of the recycling population in the management of waste in Colombia.

7 By affirmative actions we understand all types of mea-sures or policies aimed at favouring a determined group or persons, whether it be with the end of eliminating or reducing the social, cultural or economic inequalities which affect them, or to achieve better representation for the members of a group that has been underrepresented, usually a group that has been discriminated against, with the objective of achieving greater substantive equality be-tween social groups that suffer problems of discrimination or inequality of opportunities. Cfr. Ibidem

8 Ibidem.

Resolution CRA 351 of 2005: the rubbish transport business extends to the collection of recyclable waste

Waste management in the country has been consolidated into a large business of transport to final disposal of rub-bish, and all thanks to the privatisation of public hygiene services. The model implemented at the moment can-not accurately be described as complete management of solid wastes, as it has not taken into account other mod-els of waste management that consider diverse forms of exploitation, consumption and responsible disposal. The transport and final disposal business has been perpetu-ated through a tariff-based approach to public hygiene service provision expedited by the Ministry of the Envi-ronment, Housing and Territorial Development through a special administrative unit called “The Commission for the Regulation of Potable Water and Sanitation” (CRA).

Resolution 351 of 2005 should be emphasised in this regard. This resolution established the regimes of tariff regulation which hygiene service providers are subject to, along with the methodologies9 that must be employed in the calculation of ordinary waste service tariffs in the en-tire national territory. Superficially, the tariff methodology is determined according to a prior revision of a ceiling price, that is to say the accepted maximum price that a service provider can charge for each of the components of the ser-vice. If this methodology aims to make service providers compete among themselves, in order to ensure the best prices for the user, its application depends on a meticulous knowledge of the volumes and frequencies of waste pro-duction by the user in a determined municipality or city.

Lamentably this information is not precise, even in the case of cities like Bogotá,10 and this lack is justified

9 In this resolution a methodology was established for the setting of the tarriffs, weighing up the costs of the follow-ing components of hygiene services: commercialisation, collection, transport, treatment and final disposal and cleaning, transport for excess distances. It establishes that, in the calculation of the tarriff, the system of subsi-dies and contributions must also be taken into account, along with the economies of scale that may be achieved through cooperation between municipalities for regionali-sation.

10 The Service and General System of Solid Waste - SGRS-,

by the CRA, which claims that individual measurements are very costly in hygiene services. This situation, over the long term, is more costly for users, as it allows com-panies which provide public services to demand the max-imum price, although the real costs of provision may be far below this figure. In fact,

“…the large majority of public hygiene service companies seek to approximate the ceiling price, in the face of the difficulties experienced by regulators in knowing the par-ticular characteristics of markets, economies of scale, the technical conditions of the provision and the demand for investment to mitigate environmental impacts, given that these depend of specific sites and technologies utilised.” (Technical Support Document PMIRS 2006: 34)

Thus is the situation of the pricing structure in Bo-gotá, at least until the next hygiene tendering process in 2010. It could become prolonged yet further if there is no revision and reevaluation of the same CRA resolution before the new tender. For this city a limit of 120 kilos of rubbish per user per month had been set, after various investigations established that the monthly waste pro-duction per user in the city oscillates between 60 and 92 kilos. (Ibid 2006, 38). This means that the consortia providing public hygiene services in Bogotá can demand a tariff far above the real costs of managing waste in the city. Moreover, we must remember that approximately 72% of the tariff goes to transport, which shows that the business depends not on the minimisation of waste pro-duction or its treatment and exploitation, but instead on its transport.

According to various CRA officials, the new pricing methodology produced by the aforementioned resolu-tion (if this happens prior to tendering) will correct this overcosting, which will in turn lead to a reduction in the earnings of private companies engaged in public hygiene service provision. Perhaps for this reason, from the base

suffers a lack of reliable information on projections re-garding the number of users, volumes and characteristics of waste generated, efficiency indicators based on distinct scenarios for different markets and about alternative tech-nologies, and cost-benefit and cost-efficiency processes, infrastructure and equipment for hygiene services and other componenets of the system (Technical Support Document PMIRS 2006:20)

of the pricing model it has been sought to generate an economic incentive for the service provision companies. This would stem from what is earned from pricing, plus what is earned from exploitation of waste. The specific fear arising from this measure is that the consortia could carry out exploitation activities and that, for the sake of profitability, they would need to monopolise the recov-ery of recyclable materials, thus moving into competition with the recycling population. In other words, it is very probable that the application of the new pricing structure will make the exploitation of recyclable solid waste seem much more attractive to service providers and, given the preference afforded them by public policy, along with the technological advantages they enjoy, they will generate a systematic and significant process of exclusion of the recycling population, with the resulting extreme margin-alisation of this population.

Law 1259: environmental summonses and the destimulation of popular recycling

If the previous paragraphs sought to give warnings in the face of what is to come, this section describes and analy-ses the moves that have been made against the recycling populations in recent times, and which are to the benefit of private firms providing public hygiene services, given the previously described pricing system.

Law 1259, which concerns environmental summons-es, was approved by the Congress of the Republic on 19 December 2009 in an extraordinary session. It regulates the sanctions applied for 18 conducts catalogued as harmful to the environment.

It must be said that Law 1259 complements and regulates previous similar laws, in that before the En-vironmental Summonses Law there were many others that sought to regulate, manage or sanction citizens’ behaviours that were harmful to the environment, but these were not complied with. That is to say, they lacked legitimacy, due to lack of awareness, efficiency of en-forcement, inviability and their coercive element was insufficient either in terms of definition or application. Thus, the new regulation appears as a tool which grants all the previous laws and sanctionary components with operationality and persons charged with monitoring and punishment, which involves municipal legislators in their


regulation of local contexts, and the municipal executive and the police in their role of monitoring and enforce-ment, and society in general with regard to monitoring and reporting infractions.

Despite its recognised importance, numerals 6, 14 and 15 of Article 6 of Law 1259 criminalise the work of re-covering recyclable solid waste, which more than 18,000 families in Bogotá and 80,000 families in the entire coun-try engage in to survive. In these sections the following activities are typified as infractions of the norms of hy-giene and cleaning:

“…uncovering and extracting, partially or totally, without authorisation, the contents of bags and rubbish recepta-cles, once they have been left for collection in accordance with Decree 1713 2002” (Article 6).

“… mishandling of sites where solid waste is classified, commercialised, recycled or transformed” (Article 14).

“… encouragement of rummaging in rubbish and waste in ways that are not apt or adequate” (Article 15).

These three articles clearly sanction the three mo-ments which make up the working day of any recycler in the country: (1) the recovery of discarded recyclable ma-terials which are discarded in rubbish bags which are left by their producers in public spaces for later collection by the public waste services; (2) the transportation of ma-terials recovered in the streets to a factory in human or animal-drawn vehicles; and (3) the commercialisation of the same through one of the intermediaries in the re-cycling system. The sanctions range from four hours of training in environmental issues and a day of community service work by the offender to a fine equivalent to two minimum salaries. In the case of a juridical person, such as the recyclers organisations may be, the sanctions range from 10 minimum salaries to imprisonment for the legal representative of the organisation.

This law also leaves serious omissions with regard to issues such as: Who gives the authorisation for the ex-traction of waste? What exactly does mishandling in the sites where classification, commercialisation, recycling or transformation of recyclable waste consist of? Or, what are adequate means to transport waste? These themes remain open to the free interpretation of the National

Police, transit officers, police inspectors and the officials to whom municipal mayors delegate the responsibility for enforcing the Environmental Summonses Law.

We should remember that the recycling population in Colombia recovers 10% of the country’s overall waste, and thanks to their labour about 2,500 tonnes of waste is diverted from the open-air and landfill dumps around the country. This allows us to reaffirm their character as en-vironmental agents, supplementing the shortfalls of the formal system of recyclable solid waste recovery, not to mention the fact that they constitute an alternative op-tion in the absence of a low-waste culture. Moreover, in so far as this work allows for the generation of minimum living requirements, its criminalisation and prohibition leads to an unprecedented social trauma, not to mention putting at risk the lives of more than 18,000 families in Bogotá and more than 50,000 families around the coun-try (a total of 250,000 individuals) who obtain their basic needs through this work.11

The Law of Environmental Summonses fails to achieve its principal objective, in that it destimulates an environmental practice that is unrecognised by society: the recovery of solid waste by the country’s recycling population. Despite the fact that the ex-Minister for the Environment, Juan Lozano, recognised the threat posed to the recycling population by a poor interpretation of this law, in particular the articles described above, rectifi-cation was only issued in the form of a recommendation, which does not mitigate or prevent the negative effect this law has on popular recycling.

The model of commodification of pubic services again excludes the most poor: the recyclers of the Navarro dumping site in Cali

The city of Cali, since the end of the 1960s, has used an open-air dumping site in Navarro for the final disposal

11 The Association of Recyclers of Bogotá, from its work in social promotion in 19 localities of the city, estimated the population at 18,000 recyclers in 2004. Nonetheless the UESP and DANE affirm that in 2003 there were 8,479 established recyclers and the total number of people who depended on this activity was 21,676, taking the average number of person per home at 5 (DANE 2003: 10).

of its waste. Since its foundation hundreds of recycling families have used it for their subsistence, foraging for recyclable materials and objects that can be reused. In the face of the saturation and harmful environmental im-pacts of the dump, which stemmed from a deficient and improvised system of public waste management, it was decided in 1999 to close the site as part of a “plan for the management, recovery and environmental restora-tion for closure and sealing of the Navarro dump and the construction of a transitory landfill site for the municipal-ity of Cali”.

According to Civisol - the juridical support body for the recycling population of Cali - the recyclers of the Na-varro dump organised and repeatedly tried to form part of the new system of waste management in the municipal-ity, hoping that the closure might not leave them without the means for their basic subsistence. Thus, this support organisation embodied the demands for solutions to work, for business and for peripheral issues pertaining to subsistence. But despite agreements on the search for solutions, on 25 June 2008 the Navarro dump was closed without the municipal government, nor the management, offering any alternatives for the subsistence of the recy-cling population that had worked there. For this reason, with the support of Civisol more than 23 writs were is-sued with the aim of protecting the rights of this popula-tion. After failing in the courts of Cali, the case was taken to the Constitutional Court which proffered one of the most important rulings thus far with regard to the protec-tion of the recycling population’s rights.12

12 There the Constitutional Court “…orders the Municipal Mayor’s Office of Cali, through its Secretaries of Educa-tion, Health and Social Wellbeing, that within a term of two months they adopt measures necessary to assure the effective enjoyment of their constitutional rights to health, education and food. Equally, it orders the Municipal May-or’s Office of Cali, in coordination with the Public Hygiene Services Company of Cali “EMSIRVA ESP”, or the compa-ny that replaces it, the Regional Autonomous Corporation of the Valley – CVC, and the Environmental Administration Department DAGMA to link the plaintiffs to work alterna-tives and subsistence resources as previously promised in the acts of 13 June and 8 August 2008, and in the PGIRS, among others”. Constitutional Court, Note 2.

This act to protect the rights of the recycling popula-tion offers some hope to recyclers around the country in that it generates a juridical path to prevent business models and concessions for the provision of public hy-giene services from being developed in detriment to the rights of vulnerable communities who live off the recy-cling system. It represents an invitation to rethink the model of waste management in a more inclusive manner, that sets out from a recognition of the environmental and economic contribution that has been made by the recycling community for more than 60 years.

Despite this judicial success and the efforts of vari-ous social sectors to visibilise and dignify the work of the recycling population in Colombia, the dark hand of social sectors that neither accept nor respect the recy-cling community as the environmental agents, workers and human beings that they are, acts in the most mis-erable and inhuman manner thinkable. And in keeping with the mafiosi political culture that bolsters their logic in the systematic elimination of others, the lives of two recyclers in Cali were taken in July of this year. A criminal practice applied to vulnerable sectors of society, such as the recycling population, reappeared in the headlines. The newspaper El Espectador ran the following headline on one of its pages on 11 July this year: “Atentado en Cali dejó dos recicladores muertos” (“Attack in Cali leaves two recyclers dead”)13. Social cleansing as a criminal practice, which the recycling population has traditionally fallen victim to, is simply an extreme version of the attitude of generalised discrimination in our society with regard to vulnerable communities which, because of their poverty, the better off do not wish to see.

The tension between legality and ethics: the role of private firms like Residuos Ecoeficiencia

Tensions between ethics and legality surface not only in the public policy decisions previously described, but

13 It also reported: “The legal capacity of this city says that it represents social cleansing. The attack was recorded in the city of Cali when two men in a vehicle called to a recycler who was in the site, and gave him a sealed box which they said contained food. When he opened it there was an explosion which ended his life and that of a friend who was close-by.” (Elespectador.com)


also in the relationship between the market and society in general. Not only is there a tension from the mercan-tilist model of public service management, which is em-bodied in the concession of hygiene services, but also in some levels of the economic system of recycling, the economic logic of which has allowed the lawyer Adriana Ruiz to describe with such clarity “those who, with ‘great business vision’ have sought to compete with society’s most marginalised: the traditional recyclers of an infor-mal subsistence economy. It represents a free and pain-fully asymmetric competition in this deregulated and very savage market of rubbish recycling in Colombia” (Civisol 2009: 6).

The company Residuos Ecoeficiencia, a large per-centage of which belongs to the sons of President Uribe Vélez, forms part of the group of entities which take legal advantage of market freedoms to appropriate the com-ponent of recovery of recyclable waste, the stage of the system in which the popular recyclers work. Basically they, like other companies, have responded to the eco-nomic expectation surrounding the exploitation of waste, directing themselves towards the large sources of recy-clable materials formerly in the hands of the recycling population, generating agreements for the “purchase” of recyclable material and expelling recycler families from sites and thereby depriving them of the materials which allow them to survive. It is legal but such instrumentalisa-tion of legalities deriving from the permissiveness of the market undoubtedly leaves much to be desired in ethical terms. Above all because this is not a case of equitative competition, given that the sons of the President of the Republic and their offers to buy waste clearly surpass the resources available to the recycling population, includ-ing their organisations, when it comes to managing their sources of recyclable materials. Nonetheless, anyone is free to deliver their waste to whomever they wish before depositing it in public spaces, and in such cases they can choose Ecoeficiencia as the receptor of their waste. For this reason institutions, shopping centers and large businesses which used to deliver their waste to recycler organisations, now hand them over to Residuos Ecoefi-ciencia. What do they get, or hope to get, by doing this? That is open to speculation, but it is clear that what re-cycler families lose thanks to these decisions translates into more marginalised and extreme living conditions.

Conclusions

We should clarify that we do not seek to perpetuate the precarious manner in which the recycling population re-covers solid waste from rubbish bags left in public spaces. Nor do we believe that the solution lies in consolidating models of service provision which, through public policy decisions, deliver the “business of waste” into the hands of large companies or legalised local mafias, thereby vio-lating the fundamental rights of the recycling population. As has been fully demonstrated in Brazilian cities such as Diadema, it is possible to build inclusive models in which organised social actors from the most vulnerable sectors of society - in this case the organised recycling population - can take part in multiple areas of the pub-lic system of waste management, without this leading to deterioration in the provision of these services. It is also necessary to distribute responsibilities of management, which has historically remained in the hands of actors who have evaded these responsibilities.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lConstitutional Court Rulings T – 724 of 2003, • C-741 of 2003, T - 291 of 2009.

Council of State, Ruling SP E00032 of 2003•

National Decree 1713 of 2002, 1505 of 2003•

Commission for the Regulation of Potable Water and • Basic hygiene, Resolution 351 of 2005.

Congress of the Republic, Law 1259 of 2009.•

Mejía Oscar, 2008, “Cultura Política Mafiosa • y Estado Comunitario, Lógicas y Proyecciones empíricas” (“Mafiosi Political Culture and the Com-munitary State, Logics and Empirical Projections”). See: http://www.espaciocritico.com/articulos/rev08/n8_a10.htm

Association of Recyclers of Bogotá (2009), “Proc-• lama Recicladora Número 2” (“Recyclers Proclama-tion Number 2”), Bogotá.

CiViSOL Foundation (2009), Process T-2043683 • and accumulated expedients.

Parra, Federico (2004), “Procesos de territorial-• ización entre los recicladores de Santafe de Bogotá” (“Processes of Territorialisation Between the Recy-clers of Santa Fe de Bogotá”). Thesis (unpublished), for Masters in Anthropology. Faculty of Human Sci-ences, National University of Colombia.

Roth Deubel André-Nöel (1999), “Políticas Públi-• cas, formulación, implementación y evaluación” (“Public Policies, Formulation, Implementation and Evaluation”), Aurora Publications, Bogotá

Sabatier Paul, Jenkins-Smith (eds.) (1993), “Policy Change • and Learning. An Advocacy Coalition Approach”, Westview Point, Boulder.

Silvestre, Ángela; Antolinez, Alexander and Parra, Federico • (2004), “Ojo al Plan Maestro Una mirada critica al Plan Maestro para el Manejo Integral de los residuos” (“An Eye on the Master Plan. A Critical View of the Master Plan for Integral Management of Waste”), Enda América Latina.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lUESP: Unión Temporal Advisory Services – Selfinver, • (2006), “Estructuración Jurídica, Técnica, Económica, Financiera y Administrativa de un Esquema Organizacional y de Negocio para el Aprovechamiento de los Residuos Sólidos de Bogotá” (“Juridical, Technical, Economic, Fi-nancial and Administrative Structuring of an Organisational and Business Scheme for the Exploitation of Solid Waste in Bogotá”).

Executive Public Services Unit (2006), “Documento de • Soporte Técnico del Plan Maestro de Manejo de residuos Sólidos” (“Technical Support Document for the Master Plan for Management of Solid Waste”).

Varela Barrios, Edgar (2002), “La mercantilización de lo • público” (“The Mercantilisation of Public Services”). Presen-tation made at the VII International Congress of CLAD on the Reform of the State and Public Administration”, Lisbon, Portugal, 8-11

160160

African palm: the embargoed prosperity of Colombia’s Northern CoastRicardo León Cruz

“This palm stuff is one hell of a business my brother!”, exclaimed Car-los Herrera in a lively voice when the vehicle in which we were travelling from Sincelejo to the city of Cartagena arrived into the municipality of María la Baja, 72 kilometers to the south of the capital of Bolívar.

His expressiveness was not for nothing. The endless rows of this plant sewn on both sides of the road, with leaves reaching so far that they seem to be searching the sky, abruptly breaks the monotony of the flat landscape which predominates over the length of the journey between these two cities.

I met Carlos in the capital of Sucre one July afternoon when the heat seemed to melt the pavement. We got into a taxi to head for Ciudad Heroica and his Caribbean spontaneity not only broke the ice between the passengers, but also made my journey, which had begun 72 hours beforehand when I set out to learn more about the agroin-dustrial phenomenon that is African palm, far more enjoyable,

Carlos shared his experiences and memories with complete tran-quility. He told of how his friend died at the hands of men command-ed by Rodrigo Mercado Peluffo, alias Cadena, one of the most feared paramilitary commanders in the entire north coast, who forced him into exile.

He recalled how politicians in the region made corruption into a style of government, and the undignified poverty that is so abundant along the littoral, of the evictions from the land and the painful dis-placement which are the product of inexplicable paramilitary violence. A year ago he had returned to his birthplace Cartagena. He saw a dif-

ferent Atlantic coast. The ghost of Cadena no longer frightened him. The poverty remained, but he had hope in the shape of palm.

“It generated employment, created wealth, generated development - that is what the people need!”, he said, and repeated that the best thing that could happen in these fertile lands - which have been left abandoned and unproductive thanks to the indolence of its governors, the poverty of farmworkers and the bloodbath of the paramilitaries - is the sewing of palm.

Just 48 hours before, Fidel Cervantes, an affable fellow from María la Baja who spoke slowly and with great affection of his land, explained to me in the frontroom of his house a series of reasons not to trust this crop, which so many people see as the new “green gold” of Colombian agriculture.

“Palm is fracturing the social fabric of our community and it will gener-ate more poverty in the future,” he said without a hint of doubt. From his house, in the region of Nuevo Retén, María la Baja, we could make out a large chimney in the distance, which belches dense white smoke into the environment, impregnating it with a pungent sweet smell.

“In times of rains it is worse, the whole town winds up smelling of shit,” he notes, upon seeing my discomfort with the smell. According to my interviewee, many see the chimney as the new symbol of progress in the region, as it is part of the extraction plant, an installation which deep-ens yet further the increasing industrialisation of the coastal region.

The palm tsar

The María la Baja extraction plant is the first such processing facility to be installed in the department of Bolívar. It is found in the Caribbean heart-land and has the capacity to process more than 5,000 tonnes of palm fruit into oil and palm kernel oil per month.

The plant extends over 22 hectares and its shares are split among the palm farmers of the region, who own 49%, the impresario Carlos Murgas Guerrero, who holds 13%, and a group of smaller businessmen who be-tween them have the remainder. All of these shareholders are hoping to increase processing levels from 15 tonnes an hour to 45 tonnes an hour this year.

For the 700 family groups living in María la Baja who derive their sus-tenance from palm, the extraction plant means an important reduction in costs, as the harvest no longer has to be transported to Codazzi, in

* Press Office, Popular Training Insti-tute.

INDEX

African palm: the embargoed prosperity of Colombia’s Northern Coast162 ¿Continuidad o desembrujo? 163Break the spell or more of the same?

the department of Cesar, where the country’s first biodiesel plant was installed.

Coincidentally, said plant belongs to the businessman Carlos Murgas Guerrero, the same man who four years before drove forward the setting up of the facility and who also brought palm to the region, as Fidel testi-fies: “When he was Andrés Pastrana’s Minister of Agriculture, he invited various leaders from the municipality to Central America to show them how palm was cultivated, and also gave various of them demonstration plots and now he is the principal producer in this area.”

The name Murgas Guerrero has not been without controversy. Though he was born in the capital, the coast is his adopted homeland, and he is now considered the tsar of African palm in Colombia. Towards the end of the 1970s, the Murgas family moved into the business through Hacienda Las Flores, an agroindustrial complex headquartered in Codazzi which is dedicated to the production of palm derivatives.

His business career catapulted him into the political arena and it was thus that he became director of the Caja Agraria credit institution, in the government of César Gaviria, and later a principal figure in Andrés Pas-trana’s campaign on the northern coast. Once elected, the new president named him Minister for Agriculture.

As the minister responsible for this portfolio, Murgas Guerrero pushed forward legislation to grant tax incentives and credits to future palm farm-ers, despite the fact this was strongly questioned by national political sectors who thought he would be the main beneficiary.

In fact, the ex-minister is currently the largest provider of seeds at the national level. The change of government did not stem the profits flowing to Murga Guerrero and, in general, to palm farmers. Since his first man-date, President Álvaro Uribe Vélez has not stopped singing the praises of African palm. He recently approved a law which obliges the sale of diesel mixed with biodiesel, obtained from palm.

Added to this is the financing of crops with resources from Plan Co-lombia, cheques from the United States government, millionaire loans from the Agrarian Bank and Finagro, among others.

Murgas Guerrero has received great recognition from the President of the Republic for his agroindustrial achievements, although commentators say this fact is largely due to the impresario being one of the largest do-nors to the Uribe Vélez campaign.

“It was a well-executed strategy”

“But if all these stimuli had been made when rice went into crisis, we surely wouldn’t be in this situation,” laments Fidel, “the saddest thing is that it seems as though all this had been planned”.

His memories seem like pieces of a puzzle which, when put together, reveal a reality that had previously remained hidden. In the 1970s, the national government titled the lands that were occupied by the campesi-nos of María la Baja. The workers began to exploit the blessings the land offered for the cultivation of rice.

Two reservoirs that permanently supply water to this territory make María la Baja one of the largest irrigated districts in the country: a total of 16,000 hectares are favourable for the cultivation of rice, even though in these warms lands banana, yuca, guayava, cocoa and, in general, any kind of seed, grows as if by magic.

“I tell you without exaggeration, here was cultivated almost all the rice consumed in the country,” recalls Fidel. In fact, in the place where the ex-traction plant is now located, there was a mill for drying rice. But the lack of a policy for the rice sector, along with the lack of accompaniment and technical training, not to mention the bad practices of intermediaries who interfered with scales and speculated on the prices of the harvest, served to gradually destimulate the production of cereal.

“The campesinos dedicated themselves to cultivating subsistence crops so as not to die of hunger. There was no money, but there was food in quantity,” says Fidel. But what the agrarian dynamic could not achieve, violence could. The arrival of the paramilitaries to Montes de María, a natural region composed of 15 municipalities between the departments of Sucre and Bolívar, which includes María la Baja, meant the beginning of forced exoduses of entire communities.

The belts of misery surrounding urban centers began to grow and the fertile lands were converted into immense thickets. Data from Social Ac-tion show that between 1999 and 2005 some 13,000 people from María la Baja were displaced, a significant figure when one considers the munici-pality’s total population was only 42,000.

Those who returned to their plots did not have the strength to start from zero. The price of the land dropped and the businessman began to arrive. The proposals were not tempting, but many felt it was better to sell than to see their loved-ones starve.

African palm: the embargoed prosperity of Colombia’s Northern Coast164 Break the spell or more of the same?¿Continuidad o desembrujo? 165Break the spell or more of the same?

The number of families who decided to sell went up month after month, as African palm cultivation extended over the locality. Nobody knows exactly how many hectares have been sold by the campesinos, but all agree that the lands were bought by a select group of businessmen, headed up by Carlos Murgas Guerrero.

Nor is there exact information regarding the number of hectares sewn with palm. Official calculations from the Municipal Administration sug-gest that to date there are at least 6,000 hectares. Rice barely accounts for 3,000, while cocoa, banana and guayava taken together do not reach 2,000 hectares.

Harmful effects

If there is one person who criticises the cultivation of African palm it is Guanera Guiseppe, an Italian Catholic priest who has been living in the Caribbean for 20 years. I visited him one Sunday morning before he began his religious duties. Upon learning of the reason for our meeting, he did not hesitate to expound his arguments.

“Here they are buying a lot of lands, I don’t know how much has been bought in María la Baja, but what can be seen is the displacement of campesinos to the urban centers”, said Father Pepe, as he is known in the region.

His accent, a strange mix of European and coastal Colombian, confers a tone of severity on his observations. “The owners of palm are very few and the employment they generate is reduced. They don’t hire labour from the region – they bring workers from Codazzi. Asides from this, take into account the following: 50 hectares of rice generates 7 to 11 jobs, 50 hectares of palm generates one: that of caretaker.”

And even though the priest is not short of energy to divulge his criti-cisms to all those who will listen, he is conscious that the new evangelist crusade against the plant is a lost battle. “There is a lot of poverty here and the people see in palm a false promise of prosperity. They sell the land, and head to the city and when the money runs out, what then? Are they going to become taxi drivers? Are they going to ask the palm farmers for work? That crop does not generate employment. And getting into that business is not as easy as it is made out to be.”

In order for palm to be productive at least 10 hectares of land are nec-essary, a fact which in itself imposes a barrier. “The loans for the purchase

of seeds, fertilizer and technical guidance have to be backed up with land titles and a promise to sell the produce, for 20 years, to the owner of the monopoly: Carlos Murgas,” affirmed the father.

The words of a novice palm farmer in the zone, whom I met hours after my chat with the parish priest, and who asked me not to quote his name, corroborated what he said: “I have to sell everything to him (Murgas). For a tonne they pay you between 300,000 and 400,000 pesos. Two and a half hectares produce eight tonnes. They pay you monthly, but from there they discount 50% for the payment of the debt. Whether things are going well or going badly, they take 50% from you.”

Due to its characteristics, palm cannot share soil with other crops, not even traditional subsistence crops, and this fact is already causing a food crisis in the country. “Now you have to pay up to 1,000 pesos for a banana or a yuca,” says the priest.

But the clergyman’s doubts go further. “Palm is being attacked by a plague called red ring. If this turns out to be worse than the plagues that have afflicted coffee and bananas, then what? If you raze a plantation you have to wait seven years for the land to recover - that’s the nature of this plant. And then, what of the region? Now there is second and third-generation biodiesel that they take from beetroot. If that replaces palm, what then?”

His affirmation is blunt: “The political option for this land is to sew palm. The ecological effects don’t matter. The tearing up of the social fabric doesn’t matter. The food crisis doesn’t matter. What matters is sew-ing palm, nothing else!”

By the end of my trip through this region I was left with the feeling that they were all right. The campesinos who dedicate themselves to palm production are enjoying the economic benefits, the coast now has a more industrial vocation, the massive purchase of fertile lands threatens to generate a serious social crisis and the scarcity of foods, which used to grow wildly in any piece of scrubland, is already much in evidence.

However, I kept thinking of the wise words of Fidel, who seemed to sum up the core of the problem. “If it has been demonstrated that rice gives us what is needed to live, and we have the best lands in the country to grow it, why don’t they support us the same way they support the palm growers?”

166166

Chocó refuses to starve to deathJuan Diego Restrepo*

I found Eduviges Mena on the rough shores of Atrato, just a short distance from Malecón, one of the city of Quibdó’s tourist sites. She is an elderly woman who, she told me, has for some years been com-ing here every morning, where she spends several hours bending her body at a perfect 90 degree angle, under the inclement Chocó sun and persistent rain, to search for gold. With a small metal bar she clears stones, pieces of plastic and animal bones, and digs small holes to extract the lumps of grey soil which she places in her tray and cleans in the flowing waters. Nothing perturbs her. Her hands shake the wooden receptacle and with a microscopic stare she scru-tinises the washed sand in the hope of finding something that shines. “We’ll find something, paisa” she says, According to her story, each day she extracts small particles of gold for which she is paid between 10,000 and 15,000 pesos.

A few metres away, a group of women wash, and extract the en-trails of fish brought there by fishermen who arrive from diverse parts of the tributary. Between the laughter, song and insults, they deposit the fish in large plastic receptacles in wait of purchasers, who will pay between 5,000 and 10,000 pesos for each of them.

Here nothing is wasted, and María knows this well. Each day she waits, smiling patiently, for her friends to finish preparing the animals so that she can ask for their waste, which she will later use as bait to attract sardines and other fish. With their sale, she supports eight children and two grandchildren.

On the other side of Malecón, on the steps of the port, a group of lo-cal youths, who dedicate their days to loading and unloading the ships of every shape and size that arrive in the early hours, unload bananas, mangoes, passion fruit, corn and many other goods, before loading consignments of rice, salt, oil, sardines, canned tuna and lentils.

In this sector of the city there is an atmosphere of searching, in which all try to scratch out the little capital that will allow them to sur-vive, albeit “barely and very poorly”, in the words of Nubia Cuéllar, a fruit seller who also warns: “in the countryside, things are worse”.

A leader from the Greater Community Council of the Popular Campesino Organisation of Alto Atrato (Cocomopoca), who would only speak on condition that her name was kept secret, confirmed what Nubia said, and offered two explanations: the historic marginalisation which Chocó has been subjected to by various governments and the effects of violence over the last 12 years, which the communities she leads have been affected by. Over the last 10 years the 40 community councils that make up this organisation have seen their populations reduced by more than 50%: in 1999 they had 30,000 inhabitants, and today there are only 12,000.

“The communities that make up Cocomopoca have been dedicated to agriculture, fishing and mining, but in the last five years these traditional practices have been affected by the war,” she says. It is not just forced dis-placement that has altered the social fabric of the communities. Those who decide to stay in the territories are subjected to long periods of confinement imposed by the army and illegal armed groups. “Some impede access to markets and don’t let people go out at night to fish and hunt; others appro-priate the products cultivated by the campesinos,” she adds. Such practices aggravate the food crisis being suffered by the region, which has already taken on the character of a humanitarian crisis.

To all this has been added, for at least the last three years, the growth of areas sewn with coca leaf, an activity which has served to complicate the social, economic, and cultural situation of the region.

“The sewing of coca is generally done under duress, but there are also volunteers,” a religious worker who has spent several years working with Af-rocolombian and indigenous communities in the region, and who asks not to be identified, tells me. “Now they prefer to buy food rather than grow it, and they depend on money. Practices such as the exchange of foods have

* Journalist, Press Office of the Popular Training Institute, Medellín.

INDEX

Break the spell or more of the same?¿Continuidad o desembrujo? 169Break the spell or more of the same?168 Chocó refuses to starve to death168 Break the spell or more of the same? 169

been done away with.” The problem generated by crops for illicit use is that the money earned does not improve quality of life for those who actually grow it.

The depth of the problem is, in large part, set out in the study Análisis de las condiciones de vulnerabilidad de la población indígena del Chocó (“Analysis of the conditions of vulnerability of the indigenous population of Chocó”), carried out by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the World Health Organi-sation (WHO) and the Panamerican Health Organisation (PHO), along with the World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef in 2008. According to the pre-liminary results, 67.3% of children between one and four-years-old suffered chronic malnutrition (with the national average standing at 12%); close to 50% of children in the same age group suffered anaemia according to blood samples (the national prevalence is 33.2%). Another of the findings indi-cates that 99.9% of indigenous homes perceive themselves as experiencing food insecurity, and 94.8% of these saw it as being severe.

“The situation is very serious,” reiterates a PMA officer who, in keeping with the protocol which distinguishes workers from international organisa-tions, told me she would speak under her own name. She puts emphasis on the holistic view which should be taken in addressing the crisis, “as nothing gets done if fundamental health issues, such as the treatment of water, pro-grammes of training and prevention, and strengthening of income genera-tion, are not attended to”, she adds.

The aforementioned study indicates that between August 2007 and July 2008, 267 children were attended in the Nutritional Recovery Centers of the Colombian Institute of Family Wellbeing (ICBF). 61% of these belonged to afrocolombian families and 34.8% were indigenous. Of the total number seen, 28.1% were living in situations of displacement; six out of 10 children attended were not part of any growth and development programme; 34% did not have complete vaccinations; and close to 56.6% were not receiving the complementary food benefits supplied by the ICBF.

“One of the most worrying aspects is that children are showing seri-ous malnutrition so severe that they arrive to hospitals with Marasmo and Kwashiorkor, two typologies of malnutrition characteristic of Africa,” indi-cates the officer, who admits that there may be food, “but without proper health programmes, the crisis will not be overcome”

María Celina Velásquez, a young Embera-Chamí indigenous woman, and a member of the Orewa Association of Local Authorities, which groups to-

gether the Embera, Wounaan, Katío, Chamí and Tule ethnicities, all of which are present in Chocó, is conscious of the comprehensive attention that this crisis requires, but she says greater institutional commitment is required.

“The doctors only reach certain parts of our territories, they don’t go any further. I don’t know whether it’s because they don’t like it, or because they are afraid,” comments the indigenous woman, as she explains that this attitude creates a vicious cycle among the communities, as they only bring the sickest patients to the doctors and leave the rest at home, without any preventive attention. “It is for this reason that, when children arrive at hospi-tal and they are already very sick, there is often nothing that can be done.”

María Celina also warns that for those living in the indigenous territories there are additional problems, as “they suffer confinement and food block-ades by the armed actors, including the army, which hinder the arrival of foods and medicines”.

“Moreover, we can no longer collect food or hunt,” she says. For the indigenous, as for the afrocolombian populations, it has become difficult to go out at dusk or dawn. “Sometimes the army does not let people out of the settlements for two or three days. That explains the malnutrition”, emphasises María Celina.

One of the ways that the state has intervened in the problem is through “Families in Action”. This comprises a governmental programme which of-fers a monthly payment for the sustenance of school-going children in fami-lies classified as Sisben level one and in conditions of displacement. On average, 30,000 pesos are paid each month for each minor who attends school, and for those who attend growth and development programmes.

The same week that I visited Quibdó, I had the opportunity to see the large queues at the doors of the local branch of the Agrarian Bank. One hundred women waited their turn to enter the bank and receive their mon-ey. “I come from Lloró to get 60,000 pesos,” Isabela, a substantial women with dark hair and one child in school, tells me. “They are going to give me the money for two months.” She had been there the previous day, and she would return again the next. She invested close to 80,000 in the journey, between transport, food and accommodation. Just like her, many women wound up paying more than they received in the process of accessing the subsidy.

In a report published in February 2009 by the Presidential Agency for So-cial Action and International Cooperation, the Inter-American Development

Break the spell or more of the same?¿Continuidad o desembrujo?Break the spell or more of the same?Chocó refuses to starve to death170 Break the spell or more of the same? 171

Bank (BID), which finances a significant part of the programme, reported that to December 2008 some 1,857,760 families had been registered with the programme. This included 27,921 from the department of Chocó. This corresponds to 52.8% of the total number of families registered in Sisben level one.

But the Greater Community Council of the Comprehensive Campesino Association of Atrato (Cocomacia), is not so optimistic about this pro-gramme, as it has let the national government know. One of the most criti-cal is Octavio Rojas, legal representative of the organisation, which brings together 124 community councils based in eight municipalities of Chocó and Antioquia, and which includes 7,000 families and close to 40,000 indi-viduals.

“Families in Action is a programme which, even if important for our com-munities, steers us into dependency,” explains Rojas. What is required, he adds, “is economic, technical and legal support in order that communities develop new productive dynamics. The purpose is to have products for to-day, tomorrow and the day after, and not to create dependency within our communities, because in the moment that this programme fails they will be left totally unprotected”.

The kind of backing that Rojas suggests already exists, but the authori-ties are not so given to beneficence or solidarity as he would like. One ex-ample is the loans for campesinos announced by the government through the Agrarian Bank. “They say it is aid for the countryside, but in our ter-ritories we have not been able to accede to them because we do not have the guarantees to back them up. We are poor campesino communities and we don’t have the possibility of guaranteeing the repayment of these re-sources,” he admits.

To the lack of capital is added, according to this leader, the lack of clear policies which offer opportunities for the commercialisation of agricultural and livestock products to be sold in the local or regional market. “These policies do not offer us the opportunity for our products to be commercia-lised through the businesses that we have in our communities,” says Rojas. By way of example, he describes the case of the creole chicken, the com-mercialisation of which is disregarded by the government, with privilege be-ing given to the so-called “purine” chicken.

“All of this serves to deepen the food crisis,” indicates the Cocomacia spokesman emphatically, before describing one of the many vicious cycles

that is overwhelming Chocó: “We cannot commercialise our products, which means we cannot generate resources, thereby keeping us in poverty, which in turn profoundly affects our possibilities to improve our food supplies. We live in a great dilemma”.

After speaking to Octavio Rojas I returned to Malecón. It was getting late, the sun was falling and the air seemed cooler. On the beaches of Atra-to, Eduviges Mena continued digging in the soil in search of gold. Upon seeing me she repeated her phrase: “We’ll find something, paisa, we’ll find something.” It was then that I realised this “mazamorriando”1 woman, as this ancestral practice is described, personified a department that refuses to starve to death.

1 This word comes from “mazamorrear”, the verb used to describe stirring a large stew or casserole to prevent it from sticking to the sides of a pot.


The situation of women Corporación Cactus, Tribunal de Mujeres DESC The “My rights Are Non-Negotiable” Campaign

“With a stable job everything would change for me” (Chronicle) Omaira Páez

A policy of systematic exclusion: the deficit of decent jobs facing Colombian workers and their union organisations Colombian Campaign for Decent Jobs

Cane cutters: slavery or mechanisation in times of dictatorship (Chronicle) Berenice Celeyta

Indigenous peoples, their traditional territories and capital’s new forms of appropriation Mauricio Caviedes

Gathering our determination to work “en Minga” (Chronicle) Jorge Caballero

175

184

189

204

209

218

“It isn’t the Self-Defence Forces that are killing me…

… it isn’t the FARC or the ELN either…

…for me it’s much slow-er… it’s the minimum wage!”

INDEX


The situation of womenCampaña Mis Derechos No Se Negocian (The “My Rights are Non-Negotiable” Campaign), Corporación Cactus, Tribunal de Mujeres DESC. (Cactus Corporation, Women’s ESCR Committee)

The impact of armed conflict and socio-political violence on women

The serious situation of human rights and humanitarian law, along with violence against, and the poverty and inequality of women has deepened in the context of the “democratic security” policy pursued by the Uribe Vélez government. This policy has not represented greater security in the lives of women, youths and girls. On the contrary, the implementation of the democratic security policy has weakened their rights, fragmented Colombia’s social fabric through the fear and distrust which is spread among communities, stigmatised women’s organisations in diverse re-gions of the country and increased sexual violence. Socio-political vio-lence against women is systematic and generalised and continues to be an instrument for social and political persecution, and a weapon of war used by the groups participating in the hostilities (The security forces, paramilitary groups and the guerillas) (Women’s organisations 2008).

Serious violent crimes and violations of women’s human rights

In the period between July 2002 and December 2007, 13,634 people lost their lives due to socio-political violence outside of combat in Colombia, with 13,634 of these being women.1 Of this total figure, 1,477 were forc-ibly disappeared, and of these, 179 were women. In those cases in which the presumed generic author of violations to the right to life of women is known (722 cases), 70.08% were attributed to the state: direct perpe-tration by state agents accounted for 18.14% (131 victims); and toler-ance of or support for paramilitary violations accounted for 51.94% (375

1 Within the classification of women, girls and female adolescents are also included

INDEX

176 The situation of women 177Break the spell or more of the same?

victims). Guerrilla groups were attributed responsibility for 29.92% (216 victims) (Colombian Commission of Jurists –CCJ- 2008).

Between July 2002 and December 2007, according to this same source, at least 90 women fell victim to extra-judicial executions, directly attributable to the security forces. Between January 1997 and June 2002, 30 women were registered as victims of extrajudicial executions. (CCJ 2008).

Between July 2002 and December 2007, at least 932 people were victims of torture, with 82 of these being women. In the cases of torture of women in which the presumed generic author of the violations was known (54 cases), responsibility for 96.24% fell at the door of the state: 37.04% (20 victims) suffered torture that was perpetrated directly by state agents; while 59.26% suf-fered torture by paramilitaries that was, by omission, tol-erance, acquiescence or support, allowed by the state. The guerrillas were attributed responsibility for 3.70% of cases (CCJ 2008).

Arbitrary detentions committed against women tripled during the implementation of the “democratic security” policy, which promotes security force arrests without appropriate judicial warrants or suspects being caught in the act of committing a crime. Between July 2002 and December 2007, at least 483 women were ar-bitrarily deprived of their right to liberty, while between January 1997 and June 2001, 136 arbitrary detentions were registered. (CCJ 2008).

For women’s organisations, one of the greatest wor-ries is the generalised and systematic sexual violence against women, which is demonstrated in the voices and testimonies of victims who have broken their silence to make visible the atrocities committed against their bod-ies by all of the armed actors. Rape, slavery and sexual abuse, forced prostitution and other forms of violence are frequent practices in the context of an armed con-flict which foments violence against women in the street, the home and everyday spaces. Despite the efforts of women’s organisations, the magnitude of these crimes remains unknown. There are serious failures on the part of the justice system with regard to recognising, address-ing and delivering justice, as was demonstrated by the

Constitutional Court in Decree 092 and the monitoring carried out by women’s organisations:

“… among other obstacles faced by female victims of sex-ual violence in acceding to justice, one must emphasise the absence of justice administrative bodies in rural, poor and marginalised areas; the lack of legal aid lawyers; the lack of human and financial resources to address persistent structural problems; the institutional weakness of public ministries and the police investigating such crimes and the lack of special units – with technical skills and special ex-pertise – within the state attorney structures, the police and the court system” (SISMA Corporation 2008).

Sexual violence in figures

According to data from the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Science, (INML 2008), in 2008 21,202 expert sexological reports were made. 84% of the victims were women. Analysis by age indicates that 85.7% of the victims were minors. “The Institute evaluates 1,572 probable victims of sexual crimes per month, 52 per day, and 2 sexual crimes every hour” (INML 2008: 187). Ac-cording to this report, the home is the place where most sexual attacks are carried out (62.2%) and, as such, fam-ily members and persons known to the victim are the principal aggressors.

In 2008, the INML (2008: 160) reported 69 victims of sexual violence in which the perpetrators were armed groups which were participating in the hostilities. Re-sponsibility for 71% (49 victims) was attributed to the security forces, 21.7% (15 victims) to the guerrillas and 7.2% (5 victims) to paramilitaries. 85.5% of the victims were women.2

In 2007, the INML reported 52 victims of sexual vio-lence in which the perpetrators were armed groups which were participating in the hostilities. Responsibility for 78.8% (41 victims) was attributed to the security forces, 21.2% (11 victims) to the guerrillas. 88.23% of the victims were women.3

2 The 10 cases of sexual violence against male persons were attributed to the public security forces

3 The seven cases of sexual violence against male persons were attributed to the public security forces.

Between July 2007 and June 2008, the CCJ registered 10 victims of sexual violence in the context of socio-po-litical violence. In all cases the victims were women, In seven cases the ages of the victims was known: of these five were girls and two were adult women.4 In six of the seven cases in which the presumed generic author of the violations was known, responsibility for the crime was at-tributed to the state: in four cases this was due to direct perpetration by state agents5, while in two cases it was due to tolerance or support for violations committed by paramilitaries. One of the cases was attributed to the guerrillas.

Between July 2006 and June 2007 11 victims of sexu-al violence were registered. In all cases the victims were women. In the four cases in which the age of the victim was known, all four were girls. Ten cases were attributed to the responsibility of the state: seven due to direct per-petration by state agents, and three by way of tolerance or support for violations committed by paramilitaries. One of the cases was attributed to the guerrillas.

4 Any female person under the age of 18 is defined as a girl, any female person between the ages of 18 and 25 is defined as a youth, and women over the age of 25 are defined as adult.

5 One of the cases described corresponds to the rape of a girl in a military base in Tolemaida (Tolima) on 25 August 2007, presumably by US military officers. With respect to the source, the US Embassador in Colombia said the following: “(…) the diplomat indicated that his country would also collaborate, if so solicited, in the eventural extradition of the officers accused of raping a girl in a Colombian air base. ‘They have not yet been charged. We are ready to collaborate with the authorities and in the end it is the decision of the Attorney General to de-cide if there is currently evidence to bring charges,’ said Ambassador Brownfield. The two soldiers suspected are Army Second Sergeant Michael J. Coen and César Ruiz, who was working in the service of US personnel in the Tolemaida military base. These two US soldiers, accord-ing to various witnesses, raped a minor on Saturday 25 August when they brought the girl, who they had met that day in a discotheque in Melgar (Tolima), the municipality in which the bases is located, into the garrison. See: El

Espectador (2007), “US says Chiquita Brand directors can be extradited”, available at: www.elespectador.com

The Constitutional Court referred 183 cases of sex-ual violence to the Attorney General. These included 107 cases of rape, 36 of torture, 35 of kidnapping, 35 of murder, 21 of sexual abuse 21 of illegal detention, 12 of enslavement, nine of mutilation, seven of sexual vio-lence, seven of violent carnal access and seven of threat-making. (CCJ 2008)

Women, poverty and inequality

According to the latest figures published by DANE in 2009, there are 20.2 million people living in poverty in Colombia and 7.9 million living in misery (DNP 2009). Taking into account that women are approximately 51.4% of the total population, one can affirm that solely due to the propor-tion of the population they make up, women are more af-fected by poverty. But the story does not end there.

Poverty among women is measured in terms of in-equality in access to resources and is associated with historic factors of discrimination, which are made evident by the limitations women face in accessing services such as education, health, housing, food and work, not only for themselves, but also for their children. Due to these limits to their right to a dignified life, women lose out on opportunities for the generation of income, or social and political participation, while they also carry out work that is not socially or economically recognised as part of the productive world, such as the work of caring.

The government has tried to tackle poverty through assistentialist policies which maintain the conditions of discrimination and exclusion facing women. One of these, the Families in Action programme, involved women being obliged to change their social and economic dynamics in order to attend to their obligations as “beneficiaries”. Women must take time away from their jobs and their families to attend meetings, training sessions and they must be available for whatever activity may take place. Despite the fact that:

“…when the President speaks of social cohesion or pres-ents his social initiatives, he repeatedly mentions the pro-grammes of conditional cash transfers to the poorest. (…) Families in Action was insufficient to contain the rise in misery levels: subsidies do not reach far enough to, among other things, to counter the rise in the food prices” (Cambio

magazine 2009).


This programme, which is just a transitional policy, has generated a culture of dependency on a subsidy that excludes women from real opportunities for productivity and employment, and continues to assign them the role of carer and child-rearer. It is they who must supplement the requirements of the home without any type of recog-nition, and this work intensifies dramatically when there is insufficient income to cover costs of public services, education and health, (including treatments, medica-tions and examinations outside the Obligatory Health Plan – POS) and other costs and expenses deriving from the care of the family, for which women are generally re-quired to find creative solutions.

Additionally, the impact of poverty is differentiated due, one hand, to the way women accede to the labour market and stay in it, and on the other, by the role of international commerce, as we will see in the following paragraphs.

More work and lower quality of life for women

In the world of work the forms of discrimination against women are apparent, as are the causes and mechanisms which generate it. However, little has been done by the poli-cies of the Uribe government to tackle these inequalities.

The division of the public and private worlds, which plays a determinant role in the sexual division of labour which assigns women the exclusive responsibility for do-mestic and maternal work (reproductive work) continues to group men and women into certain occupations and distinct levels of hierarchy. In this way women find them-selves in traditionally feminine activities such as food, manufacturing and low-level occupations with lower sal-aries and decision-making powers. One conclusive piece of evidence in this regard is the fact that there are no men engaged in domestic work, while 5.5% of women are employed in this sector.

In the same way, 65% of the female population is concentrated in two branches of the economy: (1) trad-ing, hotels and restaurants, and (2) social, communal and personal services. There exists a much greater level of di-versification in the economic activities and occupations of men, meanwhile, and this allows them a greater range of possibilities for employment.

The salary breach also persists, with percentages that indicate the difference between men and women. In the formal sector, women currently receive 82% of the salary received by men, while in the informal sector they receive 65%. This breach becomes greater the higher the occu-pational position. The salary difference between men and women - especially among those with most years of education or highest qualifications – who are employees/service providing professionals, technicians or directors, sees men earning 30% more than women (Comptroller General 2008: 60)

Women employed in the informal sector meanwhile receive only 65.40% of the amount received by men working in the same sector of the economy (Álvarez Ossa 2009).

To advance in overcoming discrimination against women in the world of work it will be necessary to ap-ply concrete measures or programmes to change cultural tendencies regarding the assignment of familial respon-sibilities which continue to fall on women’s shoulders. It is important to generate policies for the generation of jobs for women which contributed to overcoming pov-erty. This would included productive jobs which are ad-equately remunerated and carried out in conditions of equality, security and human dignity and which are not simply an extension of domestic work which the woman does at home. The Conventions for the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), rati-fied by Colombia on 19 January 1982, obliges the state to take measures which contribute to the modification of socio-cultural patterns. However, the policies of the Álvaro Uribe Vélez government have not been targeted to this end.

The promises of job creation for women, through the process of internationalisation of the economy, fo-cus of those sectors of the economy which are labour intensive. They follow a strategy of segregating labour, with between 60% and 70% of women being in the lowest levels of chains of production. In this type of production labour costs represent an important proportion of total costs (Latin America Women’s Network 2001), as is the case in export-orientated agro-industries such as flori-culture, fruit and teas. These are precisely the sectors the

Agroindustrial Model of Business Management (MEGA), which is to be developed in the Bogotá City-Region area, hopes to push the country towards.6

The jobs that are generated for women, in accor-dance with the promises of commercial agreements, and which serve to promote their involvement, are character-ised by low salaries, instability and few possibilities for union organisation.

Informality

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), informal work includes remunerated work (eg: both self-employment and salaried employees) which is not registered, regulated or protected by legal or norma-tive frameworks, along with non-remunerated work car-ried out in a company which generates income. Informal workers do not enjoy secure job contracts, labour facili-ties, social protection or representation as workers (ILO 2005).

In Latin America the percentage of informal workers went from 50.1 % in 1995 to 48.5 % in 2005, with women being the most affected by the phenomenon with the proportion in informality standing at 51.4%. In Colombia the proportion of underemployment due to insufficient hours and low salaries passed from 34% in 2006 to 33.1% in 2008, while the figures for Bogotá went from 33.8% in 2005 to 30.7% in 2008 (DANE 2008). The rate of un-employment in Colombia dropped from 12.5% in 2004 to 11% in 2008, a fall of 1.5%. In 2005 Bogotá showed an unemployment rate of 12.8%, which fell to 10.1% in 2008. Women are the worst affected by unemployment, with a rate 1.5 times higher that that of their male coun-terparts, meaning that women face greater difficulty in accessing employment.

The rise in the percentage of informal workers in the country is represented among both sexes, with women showing the greater rises. This difference may be ex-

6 MEGA is an integration project focused on Bogotá and its hinterland which is based on the promotion of agricultural export products with aggregated value. It is expected to use 500,000 hectares of land around Bogotá.

plained by the higher level of unemployment among the female population and the different forms of discrimina-tion to which they are subjected in their efforts to get work, along with the logic of reproducing socially and culturally assigned roles for women which promotes their inclusion in the informal sector in order that they con-tinue to take responsibility for domestic, reproductive duties in parallel to remunerated work.

The economic crisis and women

Over the last five years Colombia showed the highest rises in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in its history. But in 2008, thanks to the global crisis, the economy slowed down and only grew by 2.5%, one third of the figure regis-tered the previous year. However, structural problems did not allow these last years of growth to deliver substantial changes in labour market indicators.

The ILO, in its recent report “Global Employment Trends”, showed that the global rate of unemployment could rise between 6.3% and 7.1%, with a respective rise in female unemployment rates of 6.5% and 7.5% (com-pared with 6.1% and 7.05 for men). This would produce a rise of between 24 million and 52 million unemployed people in the world, of which between 10 million and 22 million would be women. (ILO 2009). The report also states an expectation that the gender impact of the eco-nomic crisis, in terms of unemployment rates, will be more harmful for women than for men in the majority of the regions of the world and with greatest clarity in Latin America and the Caribbean.

These facts are to be expected given the gender in-equality that characterises the world of work, which has fuelled women’s insertion into the informal sector and the least valued jobs, which in turn translates into great-er vulnerability during periods of economic recession.

According to the ILO, in 2008 female unemployment stood at 6.3% while in Latin America it was 9.3% (sur-passed only by the Middle East, with 13.4% and North Africa, with 16.1%). An unemployment rate of between 9.8% and 11% is foreseen for the Latin America region.

Due to the impact of the crisis, some studies project that Colombia may have close to three million unem-


ployed in 2009, which translates into an unemployment rate among women of more than 19% (López Montaño 2009).

The export sectors which employ mostly female la-bour will be the most affected by the economic crisis which has, thus far, not shown its full reach. It is foreseen that the floriculture and manufacturing sectors will be af-fected, and their workers cast into unemployment.

Between 2004 and 2008, due to the revaluation of the peso, floriculture companies sacked more than 22,000 workers, the vast majority of them women. Resi-dents of the municipalities dedicated to the production of flowers for export were faced with a critical situation because in times of crisis there is no possibility of work, nor access to any programme of social protection. This situation was more bitter still for female heads of house-hold who represent 30% of homes in Colombia and who find themselves, together with their families, subjected to a situation which violated their economic, social and cultural rights.

Women and commercial agreements

Globalisation has generated new policies and market dy-namics which affect women in a largely undocumented way. Under this new global regime, many of the emerg-ing economies have to enter into agreements to engage with the system, and for this reason they rapidly sign “as-sociation agreements and free trade agreements” with countries that enjoy more solid economies and do not take into account the impact on different populations in terms of human rights.

In this context of growth in the Latin American mar-ket, Colombia has won a position of leadership thanks to changes in its foreign trade policies and the absorption of new technologies into its industry. These changes have meant that “in less than three decades (Colombia) grew her income from exports thirty-fold, from $1 billion in the 1970s to more than 30,000 billion in 2008” (Llorente 2009).

However, these figures, which represent a success for the government of Álvaro Uribe, do not include so-cial issues such as: female unemployment of 15.1%;

access to employment, given that of every 100 women who have a job, 39 suffer inadequate conditions (Álvarez 2009); the 41% growth in forced displacement in rela-tion to 2007, with women being 53% of this population; the 20.2 million people who live in conditions of poverty, and the 7.9 million living in misery, according to the lat-est figures from DANE; the 35% of violent acts against unionised persons committed during the tenure of the current government, along with the 498 union activists/members murdered (National Union School, ENS; 2009). And with regard to the government’s assistentialist social programmes, it has been demonstrated that “Families in Action does not address the problem of extreme poverty. In sum, misery levels grew not only despite greater eco-nomic growth, but also despite the expansion of state subsidies” (elespectador.com 2009).7 Furthermore, con-ditions of discrimination against women due to their eth-nicity, social level and gender, continue.

One of the three axes of the new governmental ex-port strategy presented in the second semester of 2009 by Minister Plata is “the speeding up of free trade agree-ments” (FTAs).8 The urgency of the need to speed up negotiations means that the goal for 2010 is to have “9 FTAs with 45 countries, which represent 1.3 billion con-sumers, all of them in Europe and America”. Of the trea-ties ratified in Colombia, outside of Latin America and the Caribbean, are Canada, the United States and the European Union, with the last of these still being in ne-gotiations.

Both the Canadian and the US parliaments have put the ratification of their FTAs with Colombia on ice due to concerns over the systematic violation of human rights, especially the labour, territorial and environmental rights

7 El Espectador. “Pobreza y Economía” (“Poverty and the Economy”), September, 2009. See: http://www.elespectador.com/articulo159142-pobreza-y-economia

8 Correa C., Jorge. “Gobierno agilizará acuerdos comercial-es y otorgará cupos de crédito y aumentará promoción en el exterior” (“The government will speed up commerical agreements and will grant credits and enlarge foreign pro-motion”), 20 August 2009. See: http://www.portafolio.com.co/economia/finanzas/ARTICULO-WEB-NOTA_IN-TERIOR_PORTA-5903248.html

of Colombian citizens. The FTA with the United States, signed in February 2006, in its labour chapter, does not include effective mechanisms to prevent and stop abus-es of the rights of workers linked to export sectors, nor does it guarantee dignified work conditions, above all for women. In this way, labour insecurity is worsened by the lack of guarantees for union activity, which manifest in murders, threats, attacks and denial of union regis-tration. Exercising the right to free association and the defence of labour rights thus becomes something dan-gerous and feared.

In the Canadian case, the FTA was signed in No-vember 2008 and, according to President Uribe, will have “benefits in economic terms and in the generation of good quality work with affiliation to social security” (Semana.com 2008). This agreement has not yet been ratified by the Canadian parliament, as the questions raised by the citizenry of the country have been taken into account. These refer, apart from the violation of labour rights, to extrajudicial executions, state crimes (wrongly called “false positives”), DAS interceptions, links between politicians and paramilitaries, the serious accusations concerning the business interests of Uribe’s sons, and worries over the unprecedented constitutional amendment to guarantee a third consecutive mandate. Canadian civil society and politics is unsettled by the lack of guarantees for the Colombian people in terms of rights.

One of the most delicate concerns in the negotia-tions with Canada is that its decisions could be contami-nated by the interests of its neighbour, the United States of America: “since Canada joined the United States and Mexico in the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2005, Canada increasingly adheres to the strategy of the United States to undermine Latin American solidarity by subscribing to pacts which have (…) been identified as strategic” (Katz y Healy 2008).

Currently, the treaty that is being negotiated with the European Union has received criticisms from sectors civil society due to: the possibility that existing cooperation funds be reassigned to development cooperation, doubts over the facilities in the agreements concerning patents, the commercialisation of banana and nickel, and finally the suspicion that the agreement goes further than the

one agreed with the United States. One of the points that differentiates the two agreements is that the presence of European hypermarkets in Colombia has already gener-ated displacement, due to the construction of shopping centers, the obligatory closing of small markets, and the resulting unemployment, mass registration with “associ-ated work cooperatives” and price competition facing medium and small-scale businesses, without knowledge of environmental impacts. The effects are, in their ma-jority, suffered by the female population, thanks to their links to the service and agriculture sectors.

It is important to recognise that no trade agreement can contribute to overcoming poverty and discrimination if it is based on the exploitation of labour laws which re-duce the labour rights of women. As stated by the Demo-cratic Congresswoman Linda Sánchez: “it is women who pay the highest costs for these agreements” (Fair Trade Campaign 2006). Furthermore, the FTA undermines the sovereignty of the country, and establishes competition among unequals, in which the people of both parties are harmed.

In conclusion, the Colombian government has pro-moted the “democratic security” policy as an effective strategy to confront drug trafficking, the insecurity gen-erated by the guerrillas and to make the country more at-tractive to private investment, and thereby the agreement of FTAs. And despite the involvement of the Presidential Council for Women’s Equality, the FTA negotiations have “not carried out monitoring of labour reform, political re-form or the Justice and Peace Law, or the Victims’ Law” (Women’s Organisations 2008). It is therefore evident that there is no real commitment in the current government with the meeting of obligations set out in international treaties for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women, and that violations of women’s rights continue to increase daily and that none of the policies enacted has managed to respond to the difficult situ-ation facing the female population with regard to their educational, housing, land, work and health care rights.


B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lWomen’s organisations (2008). “Las mujeres en • Colombia: frente a una política de discriminación y autoritarismo” (“Women in Colombia: Facing a Policy of Discrimination and Authoritarianism”). Document presented to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Bogotá.

Álvarez Ossa Lorena (2009), “Análisis de Coyuntu-• ra” (“Analysis of Scenario”), Unpublished, National Union School.

Colombian Commission of Jurists (2008), “Situ-• ación de derechos humanos y derecho humanitario en Colombia” (“The Situation of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Colombia”), Bogotá.

Fair Trade Campaign (2006), “Mis Derechos no se • Negocian” (“My Rights are Non-Negotiable”), Forum in the Colombian Congress: “Trade Agreements are Also A Women’s Issue”, Bogotá.

Colombian Commission of Jurists, Roundtable on • Women and the Armed Conflict (2008). “VIII Report 2007 – 2008 on Sociopolitical Violence Against Women and Girls in Colombia”, Bogotá.

Corporación SISMA (2008), “VIII Report 2007 – • 2008 on Sociopolitical Violence Against Women and Girls in Colombia. Obstacles Facing Female Victims of Sexual Violence in Accessing Justice in Colom-bia”, Bogotá.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lNational Planning Department (2008), available at: • http://www.dane.gov.co/files/investigaciones/empleo/ech_informalidad/IItrimestre

_______ (2009), available at: • http://www.dnp.gov.co/PortalWeb/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=oExBrVKBtLA%3d&tabid=36

El Espectador• (2009), “Pobreza y Economía” (“Poverty and Economy”), available at: http://www.elespectador.com/articulo159142-pobreza-y-economia

National Union School (2009). “Informe de la CSI • sobre violaciones de derechos sindicales en 2008” (“CSI Report on Union Rights Violations in 2008”).

Colombian Institute for Family Wellbeing (2008), • “Hogares Comunitarios de Bienestar, 20 años con-struyendo amor” (“Community Welfare Homes, 20 Years Building Love”), Bogotá.

National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic • Sciences, (2008), “Forensis 2008” (“Forensics 2008”), Bogotá, available at: www.medicinalegal.gov.co.

Katz, Sheila and Healy, Teresa (2008), “Bajo la • hegemonía de EE.UU.: Canadá y Colombia se encaminan a un pacto comercial” (“Under US He-gemony: Canada and Colombia Head for a Trade Agreement”), Canadian Labour Congress.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lLópez Montaño, Cecilia (2009), “La mujer en la • crisis” (“Women In Crisis”), in Caja de Herramien-tas, No 132

Llorente, Rodrigo (2009), “Krugman y el TLC” • (“Krugman and the FTA”), available at: http://www.larepublica.com.co/archivos/OPINION/2009-08-26/krugman-y-el-tlc_81653.php

International Labour Organisation-INFORM (2005), • available at: http://www.ilo.org/public/libdoc/ILO-Thesaurus/spanish/tr1746.htm

_______(2006), “Tendencias Mundiales de Empleo” • (“World Employment Tendencies”), Geneva, Switzer-land. Available at: http://www.ilo.org/public/spanish/bureau/inf/pr/2006/2.htm

Comptroller General (2008), Centre for Legal, Jus-• tice and Societal Studies (DeJusticia), “Estudio del derecho a la salud en la perspectiva de los derechos Humanos” (“Study of the Right to Health from a Hu-man Rights Perspective”), Bogotá.

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B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lCambio magazine • (2009), “Programas sociales de subsidios son un paliativo para la pobreza pero también la perpetúan” (“Subsidy-based Social Pro-grammes are a Palliative For Poverty but they also Perpetuate it”), available at: http://www.cambio.com.co/paiscambio/844/ARTICULO-WEB-NOTA_IN-TERIOR_CAMBIO-6004092.html

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“With a stable job everything would change for me” Omaira Paez*

I was born in Yarumal Antioquia 34 years ago. I have three girls and my eldest, my son, who has already turned 18. I married at 19. It was then that I left the confinement of my home. There I spent my time work-ing, because I left my studies when I was 11. I knew it was a mistake, both mine and my mother’s. She didn’t say anything when I suddenly decided to stop studying and she could have told me to stick with my studies. As she was from the countryside, it was not important.

As my husband was a building administrator, we worked in various buildings after we got married. His work seemed hard to me. We had to get up to burn wood very early. When it was wet, that was a problem. From there I had to make breakfast, lunch - ‘arepas’ - because there arepas were what people ate. I also had to make cheese, organise the cows. But that was what we did – we had what we needed to live.

We worked in many buildings, but there was only one that left me with good memories. The lady of the house was excellent and the boss was very good – they were attentive to the needs we had, they helped us with things like my son’s school. There we lived with a whole family but one day, without any explanation, they got rid of us.

Afterwards, when the children arrived, I argued with my husband for him to find us a place where they would have a school. In many buildings the children cannot study because there is no school close-by. Then we went to live in the centre of Yurumal. There the children

were in school and I looked after them while my husband worked in a building. We paid rent and services and we shopped in the market.

He liked to have a few drinks, but he started to like it more and more until one day it drove him mad. He would arrive home at two or three in the morning to wake us up shouting insults. It makes me sad to re-member how they were so young and they had to see how he mistreated me and sometimes them. What’s more, his drinking became everything, there was no money for food or for rent. What we ate, we wound up ow-ing for, because he threw everything away.

I couldn’t put up with that. My mother told me that I had to stay with him because he was my husband but I decided that wasn’t going to be my life. With my youngest daughter, who was eight months, I decided to go to a distant village so that I wouldn’t have to suffer all the drama with my husband. I also needed a place where they would give me a job because in Medellín there are very few companies and those who have work, as is logical, hold onto it with care.

My aunt had told me that there was a lot of work, and that it would be easy to set myself up there in Tocancipá. Well, things didn’t turn out so easy. In my first job in a flower company I got sick. They always had me doing the weeding, which is removing the weeds by hand. After about 15 days I developed a really bad cough and awful back pain. I was in hospital for four days, and that was during the trial period, so it cost me the job.

As the days went by I realised that after a time had passed I wouldn’t be able to make ends meet. Food for my four children, school, the mar-ket and rent couldn’t be paid with a minimum income. My son, who was 16, would have to leave school and go to work in a flower farm. We reached that agreement – I told him that alone I couldn’t manage everything.

He felt bad working with flowers. He developed bad problems with his spine and, as he wasn’t affiliated to health services or anything like that, he had to go to Sisben, but as we were in level 2 I had to go look-ing for money because we had to pay for everything. I don’t understand how we can be in level 2 if we don’t have anything. I have had to leave some rooms owing months of rent – how can they charge us if I don’t have any way of paying?

The man who hired my son did not pay his benefits or anything. After he left the business we had to accept much less than what he was * Corporación Cactus

Break the spell or more of the same?¿Continuidad o desembrujo?Break the spell or more of the same?“With a stable job everything would change for me”186 ¿Continuidad o desembrujo? 187¿Continuidad o desembrujo?

entitled to, because one day we didn’t even have anything to eat and we had to call him and accept what he offered. My son had to sign a document in the Work Inspector’s office renouncing the right to make any further demand.

In the company where I lasted longest they fired me for taking liber-ties without permission. They wouldn’t give me permission to take my son to the hospital in Bogotá, and even though I asked them 15 days in advance, the day before they told me they wouldn’t give me permission. I wasn’t going to leave my son alone in such a bad way, so I went and they didn’t like that. That’s why they fired me. I had been there more than a year.

Since then it has been very hard to find work. I have gone to many flower companies in person and the answer is always that they don’t need anyone. For some time around here companies have been closing and people are getting sacked, and noone else seems to need to hire them. I have tired myself out in the municipal authority development of-fice and I have presented myself to the public companies and other well-established companies, but nothing comes of it, there are no vacancies. At this stage even the mayor ignores me. They all hide so that they don’t have to show their faces, because they have made commitments to me that they don’t keep.

The mayor let me down when my daughter had an accident early this year. She was studying in a local school but as they hadn’t sent a teacher they were sent home at 10am. On the way home the children decided to go to the park in front of the Vereda La Fuente Church. There, while playing in the fields, she suffered a deep wound to her leg. It turned out that beforehand another child had been killed in the park and nothing had been done since to sort the place out.

That day she received 70 stitches in the Zipaquirá Hospital, because in Tocancipá there was no specialist. As I was already without work, a friend who used to be a councillor helped me with the forms because I didn’t have any way of paying for the antibiotics she had been pre-scribed. In that moment I asked the mayor to help me find a job, and soon afterwards a women’s organisation from here also asked him to do something for my daughter because her leg was infected and the antibi-otics she had been prescribed didn’t seem to be working. However, the mayor didn’t do anything. One day he answered me that he didn’t have to help all the people who were in the municipality, because his duty was to those who had been born in Tocancipá.

A little while ago they called me from the development office but it was to replace somebody. I barely worked 20 days but they wouldn’t let me continue, because the people we were replacing came back from holidays. Like that they got rid of eight other people who had started with me.

Now I am seeking work again. I do cleaning in family homes, I make chicken pastries and arepas that I sell in the neighbourhood. The bad thing is that this is only now and again, and I don’t lose but nor do I gain, and you can’t make ends meet just by selling pastries.

I any case I am happy here because I am not completely alone. I have had friends who have helped me. Women are like that – we stick together and we help each other out.

Nor do I regret having come to live in this municipality. Can you imag-ine the ordeal we would now be living through with that man? The last I heard was that he found a woman with money and that now he didn’t have to work to drink because he could spend the woman’s money. I decided to make a claim against him for food. I didn’t really want to, but they convinced me to at least put a stone in his shoe for all his ir-responsibility. As it happened, my mother ran into him just during the days when my daughter had the accident, and reluctantly he sent about 100,000 pesos. Since then I haven’t asked for or demanded anything.

What I’m looking for is a stable job. I am tired of suffering so much. I think that my ideal job would be a stable job because I could pay for everything, rent, services and everything my children need. But my ideal job would not be in flowers. Why? Because it is very hard working in that business. It is very rare that the company pays you for the extra hours that you work. The sun is very strong and in certain seasons you don’t stop working for a second. I would like to work with food or something like that, but the most important thing is that it be a stable job.

I would also like to study, first to get my high school diploma and then study cookery because that is what I like – to become a profession-al cook. I want to see my son and my daughters graduate and then to have a career. I want them all to be prepared so that they can get a good job, so that they don’t have to go through the things I have had to.


A policy of systematic exclusion The deficit of decent jobs facing Colombian workers and their union organisations

Colombian Campaign for Decent Work

Many opinion columns, fora and seminars analyse the poverty figures di-vulged by DANE. The coincidences in the alarming data they demonstrate are surprising in themselves, but even more so is the lack of attention given to the systematic destruction of decent and productive work which forms the backdrop to this phenomenon: high economic growth, without any significant improvement in poverty or income distribution. Things go very well for businesses and their owners, and very badly for the rest of the population.

Many analysts agree that figures of 20 million living in poverty and eight million in misery are the result of years of implementation of “pro-business” economic policies, which have made the rich richer, privileging capital and withholding benefits from the poor. These policies do not generate distribution but instead promote the concentration of earnings. Social policy has meanwhile been centered on subsidies which do not resolve inequality, nor liberate anyone from the poverty trap.

Over the last seven years, the imbalance between the rights of com-panies and the rights of workers has sharpened. Figures showing exorbi-tant earnings and advantages for business, accelerating deterioration in guarantees and rights for workers, the fall, or better said, the elimination of collective negotiation, and the uselessness of social dialogue demon-strate this. The state in Colombia has lost importance in the generation of economic activity and its regulation of the economy is evermore tenu-ous. Businesses and the citizenry seek to, and succeed in, eluding their social responsibilities and adherence to the law.

Few voices are heard illuminating a fact which, from our perspective, seems obvious: the backdrop to the poverty figures is found in the exclu-sionary character of the job market. In making analysis, many forget that Colombia has the highest levels of unemployment in Latin America, even

* Elaborated from various reports and studies carried out by the National Union School (ENS). With respect to impunity regarding crimes against union activists, information and analysis was provided by the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ).

** Elaborated by José Luciano Sanín Vásquez. Edited by Juan Bernardo Rosado Duque.

INDEX

190 A policy of systematic exclusion 191Break the spell or more of the same?

in times of growth, with growing and already structural informality in the employment market, limited social se-curity cover and extremely low earnings for workers.

This reality produces tragic results: we have 18 mil-lion workers, the vast majority of whom - more than two-thirds - are living in poverty. If this is so, what is the promise which society can offer to the 20 million living in poverty? Hope for a subsidy, work or to continue in poverty? Or can we, must we, imagine that another future is possible?

This article aims to briefly explain how this situation of serious exclusion has worsened since August 2002.

Social and economic exclusion

The decrease in employment, its destabilisation and the loss of quality, along with low social protection cover contravenes the state’s commitment to the generation of decent work. In the same way, it seriously and directly affects the exercise of union freedoms.

Workers lose out in times of growth, but also • during the economic crisis. Workers were, and continue to be, those most affected by the estab-lished economic model. Firstly, because a policy that promoted competitivity on the base of reduc-tion or containment of labour costs was imposed. These policies did not have a significant impact on employment and they weakened union freedoms, such as unionisation and collective hiring. And sec-ondly, because it is they who are suffering sackings and personnel cuts in the context of a total absence of effective social safety nets for the unemployed.

With the recession, unemployment has continued to rise. In June 2009, at the national level, there were 2,454,000 unemployed, that is, 5.8% more than in the same month in 2008. Similarly, the rate of em-ployment went from 52.2% in June 2008 to 54.2% in the same month of 2009. In the years of economic growth, in which important achievements were made in terms of GDP growth with 6.9% in 2006 and 7.5% in 2007, there were no significant advances with regard to employment. Growth in employment figures was much lower: -0.9% and 1.3% respective-

ly. Since 2003, employment has grown on average by 3.5 percentage points less than GDP growth.

The growth of informality. • Moreover, in the 13 metropolitan areas of the country employment gen-eration has been focussed in the informal sector. In the last trimester of 2008, 57.7% of the employed population was working in the informal sector while in the same period in 2007 the corresponding figure was 56.9%, implying diminishing levels of formality, which dropped from 43.1% to 42.3% respectively.

The vast majority of workers are poor.• In 2008 the minimum salary was 461,500 Colombian pesos (235 dollars). However, the cost of the family food basket (for an average family of four persons) with low earnings was estimated at 979,557 pesos (498 dollars) in 2008, and for medium earnings the figure was 979,557 pesos (1,240 dollars). That is to say, the minimum salary in 2008 would only cover 47.1% of the family basket for low income and 18.9% of the family basket for medium income families.

In 2009 the minimum salary grew by 7.67% in cor-respondence with the total Consumer Price Index (IPC), reaching 496,900 pesos (198 dollars)1. For those receiving the minimum salary, their earnings fell 1.2% in real terms in relation to the national IPC, and with respect to the IPC for those with low income the fall was 2.4%. This situation was more difficult for at least 42.8%, that is 7,965,000 work-ers, who received earnings below the daily minimum wage, leaving them in poverty and exclusion. 90% of workers receive less than two minimum salaries, meaning that they cannot cover the cost of the low income family basket.

Workers who are unionised, and the few who have real capacity to negotiate their work and employ-ment conditions do not, however, enjoy substan-tially different standards of living with respect to their salary earnings. According to the ENS informa-tion system on collective agreements, the average salary of workers covered by a collective agreement

1 Average rate of change in January, February and March 2009 equivalent to 2512.42 pesos to 1 dollar.

is barely 1.32 times the average of salaried workers in the country, and 2.72 times the legal minimum salary.

More than 2/3 of workers have no social pro-• tection. For every 100 workers, only 30 are active contributors to a pension scheme, 35 are affiliated to the system of professional risks, 31 to a sever-ance fund, 31 to a family compensation funds and 41 to the contributory health system. This means that close to 12 million workers are not covered by the social security system. According to the Finan-cial Superintendent’s Office, to November 2008 a total of 982,082 people, who constitute 23.66% of the elderly population, received old-age or survi-vors’ pensions (there is no data on retirees).2 This means that of every four elderly persons, less than one receives a pension in Colombia. And in relation to the income of pensioners, the majority of these receive a lacking monthly allowance, as 76.65% re-ceive an income equal to or less than two minimum legal salaries. In the case of women the figures is 80.87%, while for men it is 68.97%.

Unemployed without social protection. • For the unemployed population of the country the social security state does not exist. As soon as they lose their job, they also lose their income and the fol-lowing month they lose their social security. If their situation worsens, they will use up whatever scarce savings they may have and they will run the risk that their children, if they are in private schools or universities, will be excluded due to non-payment. According to the Ministry for Social Protection, in 2007 80,600 unemployment subsidies were grant-ed, while in 2008 the number was 85,520. Protec-tion for the unemployed only covered 3.8% of the unemployed population in 2008. Said protection consisted of the delivery of a payment equivalent to 1.5 minimum salaries (745,350 pesos, 379.60 dollars), which is divided and granted in six monthly

2 Of the consolidated figure presented by the financial su-perintendent, we have subtracted disability pensions and pensions received by persons under 55 who receive old age and survivors’ pensions.

payments (124,225 pesos, 63.20 dollars), which can be received in the form of payments to the health system, food tokens and/or education, according to the preference of the beneficiary.

It is difficult not to contrast this policy with the benefits the government sees fit to grant to large businesspersons at both the national and inter-national levels.3 In the last two years businesses ceased contributing $7.9 billion pesos to the coun-try thanks to the latest tax reform and tax exemp-tions. If these resources had been used to finance unemployment subsidies, the state could give 2,832,000 unemployed people a monthly subsidy equivalent to the minimum wage for six months.

Child labour figures are alarming. According to the • National Statistics Office (DANE) in 2007 786,567 children, that is to say 6.9%, were working. 841,733 (7.4%) meanwhile spent 15 hours or more working in the home, bringing the total to 1,628,300 working children. 19% of working children are not affiliated to social security. Of the 80% who are affiliated, 77.1% of these boys, girls and adolescents are in the subsidised regime and 21.2% are in the contrib-utive regime. Without any doubt, this demonstrates yet again that working children are overwhelmingly from the poorest sectors.

According to levels of income received by children • and adolescents between five and 17 years who worked in 2007, 37.6% did not receive remunera-tion or earnings, 28% received up to one-quarter of minimum wage, 28.1% received between one-quar-ter of and minimum wage and 5.8% received more than minimum wage, This means that the majority of children did not receive remuneration for their

3 This information is confirmed by the data supplied in: “Tercera lección: Aceitar las opiniones correctas (o las dádivas particulares como catalizadoras de la lealtad)” (“Third lesson: Oil the Correct Opinions [or private gifts as catalysers of loyalty]”), in the article by Alejandro Mantilla “Ni Estado de derecho, ni Estado de opinión: Estado de Lealtad” (“Neither State of Opinion Nor Rule of Law: A State of Loyalty”), published in this report.


work, but this is not to say they did not generate in-come for their families. 42.5% of children who work do not go to school and 57.5% of working children combine work and education.

The exclusion of women and youths from the world of work

Gender inequality in the labour market. • The growth of the economically active female popula-tion has slowed in recent years. The overall rate of female participation for 2008 was 46.5%, far below the male rate of 71%. Approximately 39% of em-ployed women are experiencing underemployment; that is to say, they have inadequate work, whether that be because they have greater competencies than those required for the work they do, because they work less than 48 hours a week, or because they receive lower earnings. The rate of female un-employment was 15.1% in 2008, six points higher than the male rate which was 9% in the same year.

In the formal economy women are losing their jobs in occupational positions of greater stability and wellbeing, and they are moving into others charac-terised by lower earnings, less stability and fewer possibilities of union organisation. The informal sec-tor employs 58% of the 6,796,511 women in work. Some 65% of working women are concentrated in two branches of the economy: sales, hotels and restaurants on one hand, and communal, social and personal services on the other. Men, meanwhile, are represented in five branches of the economy, thus permitting them greater opportunities for employ-ment. In 2008, the inactive female population was 53.5%; while the rate of male inactivity stood at 28.9%. This shows that the breach between make and female unemployment is widening. Some 62%, 5,740,000, of inactive women are dedicated to do-mestic work, which implies economic dependency, incapacity to generate their own income and few possibilities for access to the labour market.

The levels of education and training demanded of women in the formal economy are greater, by one year on average, in relation to men. This means that the continuance of contradictions that impede ac-

cess to and mobility within the labour market for women. An analysis of income by gender in 2007, the last year for which such data is available, shows that on average women receive significantly less than men. Women earned only 74% of the amount earned by men, thus demonstrating the problem of gender inequality in the labour market.

Youths have precarious contracts and lower • incomes. Public and private sector work oppor-tunities for this population make the assumption, especially with regard to women, that this popula-tion can and should earn less than adults, regard-less of whether they do work of equal value. This is expressed in Law 789 of 2002 which reforms the “training contract”, under which youths between 18 and 26 enter public and private companies with a remuneration of 50% of the legal minimum salary during a learning period, and 75% for a subsequent practice period. Furthermore, Law 789 removes la-bour status from the “training contract”, and im-pedes “learning” youths from joining unions. Youths linked to the formal labour market usually work in temporary work agencies, or under “delabourised” contracts, especially through the Associated Work Cooperatives (CTAs) in which work contracts are re-placed with a non-labour relationship.

The youth labour market is characterised by unem-ployment, informality and instability. Unemploy-ment stands at 20.9%, 27.3% in the case of women, which represents a total of 1,036,800 unemployed youths. That is to say, almost half of the unem-ployed people in the country, despite the fact that this age group represents barely one quarter of Co-lombia’s economically active population. With re-gard to informality, self-employment rose by 22.4%, in parallel to a drop in formal work in the categories of private employment (-11,2%) and governmental employment (-9,28%).

Institutional exclusion

Labour legislation is out of date and runs con-• trary to decent working standards. The Labour Code has not been reformed to adapt it to Article 53 of the 1991 Constitution or the agreements of

the International Labour Organisation. Both the governments of Álvaro Uribe and their predeces-sors have opposed debate and adoption of a work statute. For this reason, labour legislation is in many cases out of date and runs contrary to fun-damental labour rights. The reforms that have been carried out have diminished and considerably af-fected workers’ rights, as was the case of Law 789 of 2002, which reduced wages by lengthening the working day; reduced supplementary payments for working Sundays and public holidays; created the possibility of fixing flexible hours and changed the character of the learning contract, removing its sta-tus as a labour contract, to mention but a few.

Labour legislation covers a very low percentage of workers - less than 30% - because the government and business leaders have thought up and promot-ed new models of labour relations without workers’ rights and without union organisation. This is the case of the Associated Work Cooperatives, learn-ing contracts, supply contracts, commercial agency contracts and independent worker contracts. In the official sector workers are frequently employed under “administrative service provision contracts”, and in both sectors “service orders” are often used to obfuscate labour relations.

Jobs without rights. • The presence of Associated Work Cooperatives (CTAs) has expanded consid-erably under this government. According to the Confederation of Cooperatives of Colombia, CON-FECOOP, in 2002 1,110 cooperatives were regis-tered and by 2008 this figure had more than tripled to 3,903, taking in both cooperatives and associ-ated work pre-cooperatives. As a consequence, CTA membership has multiplied fivefold. In 2002 97,318 members were registered and in 2008 there were 537,859. Immensely lowered costs, and labour relations free of rights considerations, led to CTAs being hailed as “the new model of labour relations”. Recent strikes by African palm workers and sugar cane cutters, the workers’ dispute in the port of Buenaventura, along with the situation of workers in hypermarkets, manufacturing, floriculture, the health sector, security, among others, show how the CTA system has contributed to a deterioration in

the quality of work in Colombia. The entities which have fostered the legal character of the CTA do not adhere to cooperative principles and make abusive use of the right to cooperative association in order to undermine the rights of workers to the benefit of business and those who, by way of being landlords to the employers, promote their creation.

Recently, at the initiative of the government, Law 1233 of 2008 was issued. However, the government will not be able to present this law as an advance in relation to international demands in this regard, as it is clear that recommendations made by the monitoring bodies of the International Labour Or-ganisation have been ignored. Law 1233 does not recognise CTA members’ right to association, ne-gotiation or strike, nor does it foresee sufficient measures to impede CTAs being instrumentalised as a means to defraud workers and unions of their rights. In sum, we can affirm that this law allows CTAs to continue being used as a means of out-sourcing which permits externalisation of company costs, and the replacement and/or dismissal of workers with labour contracts, and in many cases those workers who are unionised in collective agreements.

There are serious obstacles to union organisa-• tion. In Colombia there are 17,448,346 workers, of which less than three million have the rights to as-sociate in a union organisation, as legislation states that only those workers who have work contracts with their employers can unionise. For this reason only four out of every 100 workers are affiliated to a union organisation. While in 2002 there were 868,116, by 2008 the number had descended to 801,753 with the rate of unionisation standing at 4.51%. (ENS 2008).

Between 2002 and 2007 the Ministry for Social Pro-tection refused to register 253 new unions. This situation was denounced on multiple occasions before the Committee on Freedom of Association of the ILO, which in turn issued various recommen-dations in order that arbitrary state interference in the free creation and functioning of unions might be brought to an end. These acts have started to


diminish thanks not to the will of the government, but instead because the Constitutional Court issued various rulings according to which the Ministry for Social Protection does not have the faculty of deny-ing union registration. This represents an advance that partially satisfies ILO agreements. But despite this, serious legal limitations to the right to associa-tion persist:

a. It is made necessary to repeal or modify norms which impede the right to association of all and any workers (Art.5 CST),

b. It is necessary to repeal or modify laws which limit freedom of choice with regard to union structure which workers adopt autonomously (Art. 365 CST),

c. Additionally, it is necessary to establish a judi-cial mechanism which permits short-term res-olution of possible conflicts in the processing of union registration and other issues related to union representation.

The state promotes the extinction of union or-• ganisations and allows employers to bring this

about. The current government has restructured 412 public bodies, has destroyed 38,000 positions and has on various occasions liquidated companies in order to destroy the union and the collective agreement they were party to, and then immediate-ly set up a new company with the same functions. One recent case was the rubbish collection com-pany Emsirva, which served the city of Cali. Its clo-sure meant the sacking of 439 official workers and 34 public employees. Of these 420 were unionised. Another example took place in the municipality of Barranquilla on 23 and 24 December 2008, in which economically viable decentralised institutions were dismantled, and others restructured, with the sack-ing of 2,300 workers. In the private sector, the multi-national Unilever which employs 2,460 workers has 560 employees with indefinite or fixed contracts, and 1,900 employed through five CTAs, as a result of the elimination of its union organisations.

In the 2002 – 2008 period, thanks to the disappear-ance of unions and the reduction in membership,

the union movement lost 121,960 members. This loss was compensated by the growth in affiliation to some unions, especially in the informal sector and the creation of new unions. As a result, between the drop in affiliation and new affiliates, the final result shows that over the course of their period there was a fall of 66,363 in the overall number of union mem-bers (ENS).

Collective negotiation: a right afforded to few. • The legislation regarding collective negotiation generates diverse obstacles to the exercise of this right:

In the case of workers in private companies, ne-gotiation by branch or by productive sector is not permitted – instead it must be done exclusively according to base or company: federations and confederations cannot directly present petitions or participate in collective conflict. In relation to trade unions (those which group people according to profession or skill), these only have the right to negotiation when 75% of the workers are employed in the same company and are affiliated to the same union. It is also prohibited to strike in the case of non-compliance with collective agreements. The law permits the agreement of collective pacts and extralegal benefit plans, in detriment to the right to collective agreement. It impedes unionisation and, in so doing, the signing of collective agreements by workers with non-labour contracts (Art. 5 CST), ex-cluding those who have service provision, coopera-tive work association, and learning contracts, along with the unemployed, workers with a regulated rela-tionship with the state and workers in the informal sector. And finally, the Ministry for Social Protec-tion acts poorly in the face of violations, thanks to its lack of logistical capacity and personnel, not to mention anti-union conduct.

In the case of public employees, the government recently issue Decree 535 of 24 February 2009 which regulates Article 416 of the CST. This decree does not satisfy minimum standards of ILO agree-ments 98, 151 and 154 ratified by the Colombian state. Decree 535/09 establishes a new procedure called compromise/harmonisation in which public

employees can present petitions every two years to the national government or entities and organs of the public sector, addressing limited issues, desig-nating an indeterminate number of representatives for each party, and initiating a process of compro-mise/harmonisation for 20 days which culminates in a compromise which is not obligatory for the state.

The cover of collective negotiation is extremely low. In Colombia, of every 100 workers only 4.7 are organised in a union and only 1.28 negotiate their conditions of work and employment. This means that a fundamental factor in the construction of economic democracy and income distribution, as is the real and widespread exercise of union freedom, has ever decreasing chances for application in our country.

In addition, collective negotiation is falling just as collective agreements are on the rise. While be-tween 1996 and 2001 an average of 633 collective work agreements were made each year, benefitting 180,788 workers, between 2002 and 2008 the aver-age fell to 503, with an average coverage of 108,993 persons per year. Under the current government there has been a fall of 20.5% in collective agree-ments and 39.71% in coverage, Under this govern-ment collective agreements have gained a greater presence in the total of agreements, while collec-tive conventions have been losing ground. At the beginning of the first Uribe government such pacts represented 25.91% of the total number of agree-ments, and 73.45% of collective conventions. Six years later, these pacts represented 45.98% while the participation of collective conventions fell to 54.03%.

Strike: a right that cannot be exercised.• The leg-islation concerning the right to strike is particularly restrictive. The ILO has made observations and rec-ommendations on at least 12 fundamental aspects. The current government promoted the issuing of Law 1210, which was not subject to consultation in the Permanent Commission of Salarial and Labour Policies, and which does not overcome the legisla-tive obstacles which impede free exercise of strike action, thus leaving it effectively out of reach in

Colombia. Law 1210 of 2008 simply changed com-petencies for the declaration of illegality of strikes, placing it in the hands of labour judges and not in the Ministry for Social Protection. It also modified the Court of Obligatory Arbitrage for the ending of a strike, converting it into a court of voluntary arbi-trage, while also creating an alternative mechanism for the ending of strikes which prolongs by five days the possibility for seeking alternative ways forward in the framework of the Commission for the Har-monisation of Salarial and Labour Policies. Finally, it gave powers to the President of the Republic to end strikes in any moment if they affect “in a seri-ous way health, security, public order or economy in all or in part of the population”. Fortunately, the Constitutional Court recently declared this facet of the law unallowable.

Some of the recommendations aimed at modifying prohibitions contrary to union freedom, and which have not been taken in by the new law, include: the ability of the employer to fire workers who have participated in a strike classified as illegal, without any need to recognise any privileges; the prohibi-tion on staging strikes over non-compliance with collective conventions or strikes or work to rule ac-tions staged in solidarity; the prohibition on partial, sectional or local strikes; the prohibition of federa-tion or confederation strikes, or those carried out by unions according to branch of economic activity. Equally, the law does not define what are under-stood as essential public services in order not to limit the right to strike of public sector workers, nor has the concept of provision of minimum services been regulated.

In 2008, in a response to these limitations, 80 ac-tions of labour and union protest were presented. Among them were only two strikes, both of which were in multinationals in the mining sector - Cerro-matoso and Carbones del César. The rest involved actions outside of institutional channels.

The inexistence of the Ministry of Work and • weak inspection of workplaces. The current government did away with the Ministry of Work and merged it with the Ministry of Health, to give birth to


the Ministry for Social Protection. The Ministry has only 289 workplace inspectors, distributed among 32 territorial areas, two offices and 112 bases, with which it must guarantee fundamental labour rights in 1,101 municipalities. This means there are 0.2 in-spectors per municipality, to tackle a panorama of 400,000 formal companies.

Political and cultural exclusion

The union movement is excluded from the po-• litical system. Despite the deep institutional and political change that came with the 1991 Constitu-tion, which defined Colombia as a social and demo-cratic state, for workers and their organisations this remains an as-yet unrealised project in the con-struction of the country. During the 100 years of Colombian union activity, it has not been possible for the society and the state to include unions as a permanent and stable part of the democratic politi-cal system. Labour relations have been constructed against this backdrop. Unionism is identified as an enemy of the state and of business, and this has generated and fuelled a marked anti-union culture in the country. This hostile treatment is being deep-ened and aggravated by the current government, because asides from the growing deterioration in the balance of powers and the system of guaran-teeing rights, the last seven years have seen the implementation of an economic and political model which stands against workers and their union or-ganisations.

Unionism is stigmatised by the government. • An increasingly common and recurrent practice in Colombia is the making of hostile declarations at-tacking the legitimacy of union organisations, link-ing them to armed groups, or justifying anti-union violence as violence against the armed actors in the conflict, thereby suggesting that unionism is part of the same.

Labour conflicts are treated as public order • conflicts. One example of this treatment during 2008 was the government’s handling of labour con-flicts involving judicial workers and sugar-cane cut-ters.

The mobilisation of workers in the judicial branch, organised in Asonal Judicial, was resolved by the government declaring an internal “commotion”, that is to say, by treating a legitimate labour protest as a public order problem. The Constitutional Court declared the government’s decision unenforceable three months later, due to the abusive use of the measure. Later on, the Attorney General dismissed the President of Asonal Judicial, Fabio Hernández, just as he was announcing new protests in the face of the government’s failure to comply with labour agreements with the union.

The reactions of both the government and business leaders in the face of the work stoppage staged by 15,000 cane cutters in Valle de Cauca were char-acterised by a continuous effort to delegitimise the protest. President Álvaro Uribe, in a commu-nal council in the city of Armenia, affirmed that the stoppage was forced by FARC (Caracol-Radio, 2008). The government also tried to criminalise the national and international solidarity received by the movement, announcing investigations into the per-sons and institutions responsible for donations.

Physical exclusion of union activists and their organisations

Violence against union workers has continued and • is starting to rise again. Over the last 23 years (1986 – 2009) 2,715 union workers have been murdered, one every three days. After a 60% reduction in ho-micides between 2003 and 2007, in 2008 these kill-ings began to rise again, passing from 39 in 2007 to 49 in 2008 – a rise of 25.6%. At the time of writing, 23 union activists had been killed in 2009.

Every year more than 60% of union workers mur-dered in the world are Colombian. The rate of union murders in Colombia is five times higher than that of the rest of countries of the world, including those of dictatorial regimes which proscribe union activity.

Union members have suffered 10,097 violent inci-dents in the last 23 years, one per day. Asides from the murders, 234 union members suffered attacks, 194 were forcibly disappeared and 4,258 suffered

death threats. 35% of these violent incidents and 498 of the murders have taken place under the cur-rent government and 22 of these were presumed extrajudicial executions. More than 1,500 union leaders require protection measures. These figures contradict the government’s argument before the international community, that anti-union violence is a problem which has been overcome and is now under control.

These violations to the lives, liberty and integrity of union members, when taken together, have risen 72.7% in 2008. Discounting illegal raids, of which three were registered, all the other indicators present a worrying growth. In 2008, death threats soared: 251 more cases (a rise of 97.1%); forced displacements grew by 52.4%; there was one more case of torture, three more disappearances, 15% more cases of arbitrary detention and harassment

(ENS). The resurgence of violence against union workers in 2008 is principally associated with the process of reconfiguration of paramilitarism, which was thought to be responsible for 40.3% of cases this year.Impunity persists. The situation of impunity persists • due to the weak efforts at both penal investigation and prosecution. With regard to penal investigations it is important to underline that of 2,715 murders, the Attorney General has only investigated 1,119 cases. There are therefore 1,590 uninvestigated cases – that is, 58.7% remain in total impunity. Of the 1,119 that are being investigated, 645 cases (57.44%) remain in preliminary stages, meaning that in more than half the cases investigated the pre-sumed author of the crime has not been identified. We can say that more than three-quarters of the kill-ings of union workers are in absolute impunity and without possibility of being adequately resolved.

Source: Database DDHH- ENS

Box 1

MURDER OF UNION WORKERS January 1986 – August 2009

Total

Year 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

2715

Number of homicides 34 60 125 85 47 90 140 201 104 232 274 170

Year 98 99 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

Number of homicides 97 82 134 194 192 101 94 72 76 39 49 23

Box 2

Year 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Total

Homicides 50 101 94 72 76 39 49 23 504

Source: Database DDHH- ENS, 2009.

HOMICIDES 7 August 2002 – 7 August 2009


With respect to the stage of prosecution of murders committed between January 1986 and March 2009, this figure stands at 95.6%. This is not only because there are few sentences handed down, but also be-cause the killing of union members continues.

Other human rights violations against union mem-bers are likewise subject to an alarming grade of impunity: in the cases of common assaults, only seven sentences, corresponding to three victims, have been handed down. As such, the rate of im-punity is 98.7%. In the cases of threats there has been one sentence corresponding to one victim, with impunity standing at 99.9%. In cases of kid-napping, there have been nine sentences with 10 victims, with the percentage of impunity standing at 93,7%. In cases of forced displacement there have been four sentences corresponding to four victims. This leaves impunity at 99.7%. There has not been a single sentence stemming from the cases of forced disappearance, torture and illegal raids, leaving im-punity at 100%.

Analysing the content of the sentences handed down, it can be affirmed that the majority do not allow for clarification of the truth of the facts. The material authors have been sanctioned, but the in-tellectual authors have not. Investigation is carried out on a case-by-case basis, without any integral strategy.

This quantitative analysis of the work of the pub-lic prosecutors and judges to elucidate crimes against union workers, allows us to conclude that, at the rate of 70 sentences handed down annually by judges in the country, along with those aimed at clearing backlogs, it would take 37 years for Co-lombian justice to overcome impunity in cases con-cerning union victims. And that figure is based on the presumption that the Special Investigation and Prosecution Unit was maintained and there were to be no more murders from today. Unfortunately, the measures adopted are insufficient, as they have not managed to break the structural and historic anti-union violence of this country.

A decent work agenda for Colombia

In the face of this deep deficit of decent work, civil so-ciety continues its efforts to satisfy the necessity to de-liberate, mobilise and propose alternatives. This was so in the Social and Political Summit staged on 20, 21 and 22 August 2009 in Bogotá, in which 1,300 social leaders from around the country reached by consensus a Colom-bian agenda for decent and inclusive work from a rights perspective. (ENS 2009).

The Social and Political Summit occurred at a key moment of transition and crisis for a political model that impoverishes and an intense political debate over the current political regime’s pretentions to stay in power. The Social and Political Summit could not have been more opportune to revive our deep conviction that it is the workers who produce the wealth of our nations, that the generation of decent jobs is not a task that should be left to the market, that working life is central to the existence of all persons and that, for this reason, it is a fundamental human metaright.

In this summit lines were defined for the orientation of the fight for decent work The principal nuclei of agree-ment turned on the following axes:

The restitution of the state’s function as regulator • of the economy. Said policy must include nation-alisation, without compensation, of strategic in-dustries and the natural wealth of the country, and of the financial sector, along with the creation of control and reinvestment mechanisms targetting the earnings of multinationals. This involves the creation of a policy of protection of national pro-duction, specifically addressing small and medium industry, along with stimulation of consumption of domestic production. In this sense, it is necessary to eliminate tax-free zones. In particular, this posi-tion implies the rejection of Free Trade Agreements with Canada, the United States and the European Union, and the proposal to reorientate the foreign trade policy. Moreover, public debt must be audited to determine in which cases it is illegal and illegiti-mate and reparations should be demanded.

With regard to service provision, state policy should nationalise the health system, public services and social security.

State economic policy should bring about the re-• distribution of income through just agrarian reform, the promotion of sustainable agricultural/food production and the preservation of decent rural work. Furthermore, this production, as with urban production, should guarantee the protection of the environment and water.

On another level, the union movement is under-• stood as being inscribed in the advance of organi-sation and the widening of citizenry capacities, such as community education, to achieve active partici-pation in decision-making. This implies the promo-tion of universal basic income as an individual right which should also cover the elderly and those in-volved in the work of caring, along with the creation of a basic educational basket for persons, men and women under 18, with regard to this right.

With reference to union work, the defense of full • union freedoms, in compliance with international standards, laws and principles of the ILO, which implies freedom of association in the public sec-tor, collective negotiation and organisational plans, was defined as a priority. This leads to the inclusion of workers in decision-making for the definition of labour policies, the creation of large unions for the industrial sector, the promotion of national and regional agreements for decent work with govern-ments and candidates for Congress, the demand for direct contracting and collective negotiation, and, finally, the reactivation of the National Unitary Command to agree agendas and mobilisation with all labour organisations.

Transformations in labour conditions must be sought in accordance with Article 53 of the Consti-tution, which is made explicit in the Work Statute. Efforts must be made to create decent jobs with consideration of gender, youth and universal access taken into account, and without discrimination on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, disability, race or ethnicity. At the same time, the Ministry of Work must guarantee a reduction in the working day, without any reduction in salary, in order to generate more jobs, and the creation of an unemployment

subsidy financed by the taxes currently retained by the multinationals. In the same way, a mobile sal-ary scale must be established with monthly adjust-ments in accordance with the cost of living and the minimum professional wage.

All these proposals and programmatic and mobili-sation agreements demonstrate the vitality of a deep conviction: that every human being of productive age in Colombia has the right to a decent job and a dignified life. That in our country, with every day that passes, it be-comes more urgent to act collectively, locally and glob-ally, in the pursuit of decent work for all, in the defense of decent jobs as a fundamental human right, and in the idea that decent work is possible.

A society that claims to be organised as a social dem-ocratic and rule of law-based state, cannot be indiffer-ent to this reality. In the agenda of this tragedy-plagued country, overcoming poverty and inequality must be at the centre of political debate. In order to overcome pov-erty and close the inequality breach, it is necessary to form a social contract which redefines the objectives of economic development, the role of the state and busi-ness, and which places decent work at the centre of so-cial policy.

The most egalitarian, developed societies, with the best distribution of wealth on the planet, have managed to achieve excellent social indicators thanks to three ba-sic factors: a balance between the rights of businesses and rights of workers, which is achieved through wide de-velopment of social dialogue and collective negotiation (to the point where a direct correlation can be established between greater levels of unionisation and collective ne-gotiation and lower social and economic inequality); an active role for the state as an agent and regulator of the economy; and a high level of commitment to social re-sponsibility and compliance with the rule of law.


B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lCaracol-Radio, “Uribe afirma que el paro de ‘cor-• teros’ de caña fue obligado por las Farc” (“Uribe affirms that stoppage by cane cutters was forced by FARC”) (2008), available at: http://up.caracol.com.co/nota.aspx?id=679386

ENS, “Censo sindical” (“Union census”), Bogotá, • available at: http://www.ens.org.co

____, “• El trabajo decente como meta de la sociedad colombiana en la Cumbre Social y Política” (“Decent jobs as a goal of Colombian society at the Social and Political Summit”) (2009), available at: http://www.ens.org.co/noticias_impr.htm?AA_SL_Session=9855839b31ae0a4c75433d1874f0fa6d&x=20155187

____ ENS Unions and Labour Information System • (2008), “2º reporte a diciembre de 2008” (“2nd Report to December 2008”), Bogotá, available at: http://www.ens.org.co

Box Nº 1

FACTOR 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008

Employed: national total (1) 15,934,522 16,668,278 16,654,684 17,049,422 16,898,469 17,111,887 17,448,346

Unemployed: national total(1) 2,927,282 2,723,871 2,631,639 2,279,371 2,310,856 2,152,782 2,215,806

Unemployment rate (%) (1) 15.5 14.1 13.6 11.8 12.0 11.2 11.3

Overall participation rate (%) (1) 62.3 62.9 61.5 60.5 59.1 58.3 58.5

Subjective underemployment (1) 6,556,469 6,263,833 6,126,000 6,161,085 6,513,862 6,748,864 5,731,025

Objective underemployment (1) 2,396,531 2,327,091 2,331,901 2,349,108 2,199,668 1,799,764 1,888,947

Subjective underemployment rate (%) (1) 34.8 32.3 31.8 31.9 34.0 35.0 29.1

Objective underemployment rate (%) (1) 12.7 12.0 12.1 12.2 11.4 9.3 9.6

% employed informally (13 metropolitan areas, April - June) (1)

61.3 60.6 58.6 58.7 58.5 56.6 55.6

Number of CTAs and Pre-CTAs (2) 1,110 2,039 2,631 2,980 3,296 3,602 3,903

Number associated to CTAs and Pre- CTAs (2) 97,318 198,477 321,617 378,933 451,869 500,450 537,859

Low-income family basket value ($ and US$) (3))

691,989 733,716 773,630 813,791 847,726 898,759 979,557

276 255 295 351 360 432 498

Medium income family basket value ($ and US$) (3)

1,729,867 1,842,135 1,946,216 2,040,664 2,135,555 2,260,698 2,437,937

690 640 741 879 906 1,088 1,240

Minimum wage ($ and US$)(3)

309,000 332,000 358,000 381,500 408,000 433,700 461,500

123 115 136 164 173 209 235

Conventional salary in dollars (3) 356 307 374 446 456 555 640

Unemployment subsidy (4) 18,247 65,462 110,774 76,761 80,600 85,520

Unemployment subsidy cover (% of total unemployed) (4) 0.71 2.49 4.86 3.32 3.74 3.86

Average salary in dollars (1) 206 194 233 296 298 418

Working income of employed men (1) 579,824 653,806 696,761 775,098 793,306 986,690

Working income of employed women (1) 449,856 453,897 523,801 589,500 603,600 733,297

(1) DANE, Major Integrated Survey of Homes, monthly series 2001-2008. Annual average data.

(2) Data taken from the Confederation of Associated Cooperatives of Colombia, CTAs as Associated Work Pre-Cooperatives, Pre-CTAs.

(3) National Union School – ENS - System of Labour and Unions Information - SISLAB - subsystem SISCON.

COLOMBIA: Principal indicators of decent work: 2002 – 2008

(4) Ministry for Social Protection, Activity Report To The Honourable Congress Of The Republic. The year 2003 only has subsidies granted between October and December. Author’s calculations.

Note: to make calculations in dollars the exchange rate was taken as the annual average supplied by the Central Bank of the Republic.


Box Nº 2

COLOMBIA: Social protection indicators – 2002 – 2008

Sources: (1) DANE, Major Integrated Survey of Homes, average (January to December) Note: expanded data with population projection, with base taken from results of 2005 Census. (2), (3), (4), (5), and (6) Ministry for Social Protection, Activity Report To The Honourable Congress Of The Republic 2007-2008. (2) and (3) to May 2008, (4) to December 2007, (5) to April 2008, (7) to March 2008. ** rate for 2007, official data for health system affiliation for 2008 as yet unavailable. (7), (8) and (9) National Union School, Unions And Labour Information System – SISLAB-, National Census Subsystem. * October 2008. calculated by adding beneficiaries from each year, with respect to average employed population for these two years.

FACTOR 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 Part.% 2008

National employed total (April – June) (1)

15.934.522 16.668.278 16.654.684 17.049.422 16.898.469 17.111.887 17.448.346 100.00%

Affiliated to unemployment funds (2)

3,005,305 2,903,370 3,322,443 3,645,924 4,102,371 4,375,781 5,423,179 31.08%

Affiliated to family compensation banks (3)

3,351,691 3,574,910 3,982,629 4,390,160 4,858,857 5,041,117 5,487,373 31.45%

Affiliated to contributive health system (4)

6,096,926 5,833,693 6,824,968 7,193,889 7,287,182 7,625,481 7886867* 45.20%

Affiliated to professional risks insurance (5)

4,164,975 4,602,468 4,656,420 5,404,050 5,637,676 6,019,062 6,111,187 35.02%

Affiliated to pension funds (6) 39,539 5,218,451 4,610,733 4,747,480 5,329,909 6,422,444 5,271,160 30.21%

Population affiliated to unions (7)

868,116 844,648 831,047 847,253 818,507 801,753 4.5%

Collective covenants (8) 700 284 620 360 355 463 472

Collective conventions cover (9)

176,774 72,244 134,244 99,362 60,462 176,948 108,463 1.28%

204204

Cane cutters: slavery or mechanisation in times of dictatorship?Berenice Celeyta*

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tann-hauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die. Blade Runner

A year has passed in the valiant battle protagonised by sugar cane cutters in Valle del Cauca. Working conditions, however, continue to be extremely difficult and the Colombian and Asocañan governments now threaten to mechanise the industry, while workers continue to demand better working conditions, direct contracting and the recog-nition of and compliance with collective bargaining. The proposal to mechanise the industry was made by the owners of the cane busi-ness protected by the government of Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who have roundly refused to yield to the petitions presented by the workers to the sugar trade in September 2008. The message of Asocaña was direct: either submit to slavery or we will mechanise the industry.

Days after the directors of Asocaña announced that a continua-tion of the protests would lead to a process of mechanisation and sacking of workers, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, being required by the workers to take action on the situation and the alternatives available to those facing outsourcing, ruled: “I believe that cutting cane manually today, still amounts to slavery. If only we could offer them an alternative of

a more humane employment and be able to mechanise the collection of cane”. (Debate with ‘La Minga’ de Resistencia Social y Comunitaria Territorio [The Social Resistance and Communitary Territory Group], on peace, dialogue and coexistence, La María, Piendamó, 2 November 2008)

The military treatment of the social and labour problem of the cane cutters, ordered by the government, uncovers what is hidden by the economic and democratic security policies of this administration. Be-tween 15 September and 13 November 2008, it was surprising to see how legitimate claims based on national and international norms, such as the right to association, mobilisation, protest and strike, were an-swered with an impressive deployment of troops from the National Army and members of the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squad, ESMAD. Tanks and attack helicopters arrived to the plantations and factories, where they refuelled in the refineries. One of the most chilling incidents took place when ESMAD agents broke down the doors of local people in the municipality of Candelaria, in the department of Valle del Cauca, and later used a pacora1 which had been taken from one of the cane cutters to machete one of the residents.

The shamelessness of this government seems to be limitless. The Minister for Social Protection, Diego Palacios, in his efforts to dele-gitimise the protest, had no better argument than to say: “the workers under this regime of contracting become businesspersons and it is il-logical that businesspersons go on strike”. As if that was not enough, the then Minister for Agriculture, André Felipe Arias and the President of Asocaña, Luis Fernando Londoño, in a threatening tone declared that “dark and/or foreign forces are behind this protest”. This affirma-tion served as justification for the crude attack on workers by members of ESMAD, which left 40 workers seriously injured, and the subsequent judicial montage which illegally deprived two workers and two negotia-tion advisors of their freedom.

Fabio Olaya, Director of Sinaltrainal, who knows this problem well, stated that: “mechanisation is an objective of Asocaña and the govern-ment and it is being implemented quicker than we expected. There are currently 63 cutting machines in the 13 refineries, and each one dis-places 120 workers. Of these only four workers remain: two machinists

1 This is a tool used for cutting cane* Asociación Nomadesc.

INDEX

Break the spell or more of the same?¿Continuidad o desembrujo? 207Break the spell or more of the same?Cane cutters: slavery or mechanisation in times of dictatorship?206

and two pickers”. Of every ten workers, six will be left without jobs, that is to say, 60% of the workers in the sugar cane industry will join the ranks of the unemployed in the country, very quickly: last year 1,050,000 li-ters of ethanol were being produced daily. Asocaña has announced it would double production by 2010. However, this figure has already been achieved. That is, 2,100,000 liters daily, which makes it clear that the machines are already in operation.

The actions of the executive, the legislature and the security forces, point towards only one objective: maintaining the profits of five fami-lies and four large economic groups, in contravention of the rights of 14,000 workers employed directly in conditions of slavery and a people consumed by poverty amidst the opulence of the Ardila Lule, Caicedo González, Hurtado Holguín, and Salcedo Borrero families. As things stand, 220,000 hectares are sewn with sugar cane principally in the de-partment of Valle del Cauca, and to a lesser extent in Cauca. Asocaña foresees cultivating at least 10,000 hectares more in the coming years, extending this monocrop to the Atlantic Coast, Tolima, Huila and Lla-nos Orientales.

Labour outsourcing and mechanisation of such industries affects millions of workers throughout the world. This economic model contin-ues its march, fuelling a double-slavery - that of man and that of ma-chine - in order that both remain subordinated. He who tries to escape may die, as in the film Blade Runner. The robotisation of industry aims to replace man with machine.

For this reason, in this case it is necessary to remind the permanent assembly, with the work stoppages of 14,000 workers in the sugar cane industry, of a fair fight that lasted 58 days and succeeded in deepening national debate on the economic policies of the current government and the disgraceful contracting system of the Associated Work Coop-eratives.

These cooperatives exploit the labour of the hardworking men who dedicated themselves to the cultivation, harvesting, cleaning, cutting, and collection of cane, and the management of chemicals for the pro-duction of ethanol, sugar and fuel grade alcohol. Strong, courageous men who work between 12 and 14 hours a day for less than minimum wage, who do not enjoy any work guarantees, a fair wage, social ser-vices, or affiliation to social security. Their families bear the social bur-den of this unjust contracting system. The majority of their school-aged

children are not able to study, as their salaries are not sufficient to cover the costs of uniforms, never mind transport.

For the workers in this sector this fight, more than achieving agree-ments that meet their petitions, compliance with national and inter-national legislation or the application of ILO norms, succeeded in uncovering a model that is failing and bringing representatives of the ethanol monopoly, along with the national government and sugar cane industry, to the negotiating table. It was to be hoped that his would make these actors face up to, in full view of the world, the serious vio-lations of the rights of workers, the promotion of slavery and, what is worse, the disproportionate actions of military forces and ESMAD in the social and labour conflict.

The mechanisation of the sugar cane industry, and of all other sec-tors, aims to marginalise workers, leaving them without decision-mak-ing influence in the production process, much less in their own destiny. “What makes us human?”, is the question that we all must answer.

Fabio Olaya is clear that the fight for direct contracting and collec-tive bargaining continues and it is possible to win it. He says in strong and decisive tone:

“a few days ago workers in the municipality of El Paso, in the department of Cesar, broke away from the work cooperatives and succeeded in winning acceptance of direct contracting. The International Labour Organisation, meanwhile, demands that the Co-lombian government respect the right to association and unionisation of workers who make up the Associated Work Cooperatives.”

As we can see, these are important steps in demonstrating that neo-liberalism, slavery and mechanisation cannot win their battle with the rights of man.


Indigenous peoples, their traditional territories and capital’s new forms of appropriationMauricio Caviedes*

This article aims to explain the relationship between three factors: (1) In-digenous peoples’ resistance to eviction from their territories, taking into account an historic and anthropological perspective on the significance of the concept of territory for indigenous lands; (2) the state’s efforts to break away from or eliminate indigenous land rights; and (3) the ef-forts of capital to take advantage of indigenous rights to its benefit. The analysis of these three issues requires consideration of the Colombian government’s responsibility before the appropriation of indigenous ter-ritory, given that this divestment has been caused by the expansion of capitalism.

The analysis we propose here sets out from data collected by the Ob-servatory of Public Policies on Ethnic Rights and Development, brought together in various publications edited by the researcher Juan Carlos Houghton.

Why are indigenous peoples and the land connected?

The Colombian Constitution contains various regulations regarding in-digenous peoples, including the recognition of the cultural plurality of the nation (Article 7), and recognition of the legitimacy of indigenous authorities formed according to the customs of their peoples (Article 246). At the same time, Convention 169 of the International Labour Or-ganisation asserts that indigenous peoples have the right to form their own administrative, political and judicial authorities within their territo-ries and that any state decisions must be subject to consultation with the communities affected. The Convention likewise affirms that all those territories whose usage is necessary for the continuance of traditional indigenous activities must be understood as part of the indigenous ter-ritories. Recently, the United Nations Declaration on Indigenous Com-munities went further, in recognising the right of these peoples to free determination and ownership of the land, the subsoil and all resources

* Researcher, Corporation for Political Culture Consciousness-Raising.

INDEX

210 Indigenous peoples, their traditional territories and capital’s new forms of appropriation 211Break the spell or more of the same?

found in their territory. The recognition of these rights is based in a history of usurpation of indigenous territory, and also the history of these communities’ resistance in order to conserve their land.

There were various means through which the colonial government exercised control over indigenous manpow-er, but for the sake of brevity we will limit ourselves here to the reservations of southwest Colombia. In origin, the reservations were created by the colonial government with the intention of containing the indigenous in territo-ries where their control would be possible, in order to ad-ministrate their tax contributions. However, the colonial regime realised that, for the indigenous, production could not be demanded on an individual basis, but instead had to be sought collectively. For this, in the Andean region local councils were imposed as a form of authority to administrate community production (Friede 1944).

With time, these councils took on the role of inter-locutors with the institutions of the colonial government, to protect ownership of reservation land, which is also recognised as collective property. However, the hacien-das and properties of the Spanish grew and grew, limiting reservation territories and often usurping them. In the face of this, many indigenous communities abandoned their flatlands to occupy the mountainsides, but they also sought legal avenues to demand their traditional territories (Friede 1944). But the forms of organisation which emerged with the aim of confronting eviction were also new forms of political organisation with new politi-cal instruments, such as the formation of town councils, whose function went from simple tax administration to the defense of the reservations (Friede 1944). These forms of collective ownership and work, having emerged as an adaptation to the changes which had been im-posed, became the basis for new types of work and new ways of understanding the relationship with the land.

The emergence of the republic became a new stage for conflict. The new republic, created according to the principle of the nation-state and a private property-based economy, proposed the elimination of colonial reservations, with the intention of converting land into merchandise and a means of production on which the national economy could be built. It was then that the indigenous fight emerged as a battle for land. The res-

ervations had been converted into the base for social organisation, for organisational, political and economic structures which united communities which had until then been no more than extended families.

Thus, there is a historic relationship between the land and the social and political organisation which ad-ministrates the economy, based on collective ownership. These forms of social organisation differ from those of national society, which the state has sought to impose. In summary, the relationship between indigenous peo-ples and the land is not only a relationship of ownership or tenancy. The relationship between indigenous peoples and land is historically and intrinsically linked to their culture. Without their lands, the existence of these com-munities lacks cultural and historic meaning.

Why does capital seek to control indigenous territories?

Indigenous territorial rights and constitutional reforms

To understand the current situation of indigenous territories and the responsibilities of the government, it is necessary to take into account the constitutional reforms of the 1990s. Many authors have noted that in Colombia the indigenous movement has gone through significant changes since this decade. These changes led principally to a weakening of the movement. Analysts attribute this to the efforts of the state to instrumen-talise the indigenous movement, taking advantage of it to make constitutional reforms. Such instrumentalisa-tion was made possible thanks to the neoliberal policies which, along with the recognition of indigenous territo-rial rights, were made viable by the Colombian Political Constitution (See: Padilla 1996; Vasco 2002; Gros 1997; Houghton and Villa 2005; Houghton 2008). This does not mean to say that the rights of indigenous peoples are a neoliberal policy. Rather, it states that the political Con-stitution of Colombia recognises the rights of indigenous peoples and, at the same time, seeks to use them to the favour of neoliberal policies.

This phenomenon has two dimensions. On one level, the development of a new type of capitalism, in which states and their jurisdictions, resources and institutions

cease to form the conditions for national capitalism and instead become instruments subordinated to globalised, planetary capitalism. In this new context, territory ceas-es to be a right and states become instruments for the guarantee of private ownership of lands which are not valuable in themselves, but instead are valuable only for the economic resources which they contain. (Houghton 2008). On another level, in the face of this new form of capitalist colonialism, indigenous peoples react with new forms of mobilisation which return to tradition to confront new conditions: the strengthening of their own forms of government, their relationship of respect for nature and their control over their territories. (Houghton 2008).

The emergence of neoliberal capitalism, free trade and indigenous lands

According to Houghton (2008), America has lived these changes to the dynamic of capitalism most visibly through free trade agreements, which have generated changes in the spatial distribution of the division of labour, in the distribution of natural resources, military control of these resources and the territorial reordering of nation states. The consequence of this is the abandonment of territo-rial sovereignty by states, in favour of private capital’s control over natural resources.

In a country like Colombia, where agrarian reform never happened in an effective way, the consequences are more visible. In Colombia, the ownership of the land always fa-voured the large estates and this was consolidated with eviction and the denial of the campesino population’s right to land (Houghton 2008). But the economic system based on large estates cannot resolve the problem of the high costs that a large extension of land implies for agri-cultural production. In the case of Colombia, it is sought to resolve this contradiction when the state intervenes to finance with public resources the low productivity of the large estates. This is the point of departure from which the contradiction between neoliberal policies and the territorial rights of indigenous peoples emerges. Further-more, in order to achieve the articulation between the large estates and modern capitalism, the perseverance of forms of relationship close to feudalism is required. (Houghton 2008:25). The search for economic growth based on speculation on the future exploitation of territories and prime materials, within a state founded on large estates,

then requires the subordination of this to territorial control as private property (in place of a state which guarantees land as a right and a public good). It is in this context that, in Colombia, the proposal for a Rural Development Stat-ute, which sought to dismantle territorial rights - the recog-nition of which had been achieved by indigenous peoples through centuries of struggle - was made.

The failed Rural Development Statute (Law 1152 of 2007)

In July 2007 the government of Álvaro Uribe promoted and won the approval in Congress of the so-called “Law of Rural Development” (Ley 1152 of 2007). The Law was declared unenforceable by the Constitutional Court in March 2009. However, the approval of the law allows us understand the current government’s interest in the de-nial of indigenous territorial rights. The norm allowed the Ministry of Agriculture to decide on the borders of the agricultural frontier, define the usage of land and to or-ganise territory for the benefit of “business development zones”. That is to say, in favour of the interests of large landowners. (Houghton 2008:35).

On another level, the Rural Development Statue had the intention of legitimising possession of lands appro-priated through paramilitary violence. This device was achieved through the reversion of legal instruments that demanded recognition of ownership of the land. During the agrarian reforms of the 20th century, the state had established the obligation to prove ownership of plots of lands with the original transfer titles issued by the state. The large landowners had pressured for the rec-ognition of titles fabricated in order to legitimise the oc-cupation of lands. That is to say, the “Rural Development Statute” would have permitted the legalisation of those properties taken through paramilitary violence. It does this by allowing for legal recognition of titles which have not been issued by the appropriate state authorities, in compliance with a certain waiting period, even though the possession of the land has been achieved by illicit means. (See: Houghton 2008:148 y 149).

During the process of approval of the law, this endea-vour was publicly denounced. The government’s reaction consisted of changing the period for acquisitive prescrip-tion of rural plots to five years (according to the Civil


Code and Law 791 of 2002 concerning the ownership of real estate). This means that titles registered before 2002, even if they were not issued by a state authority, are legal titles. In this way it allows for the legalisation of lands taken illegally, in this case though paramilitary ac-tion and forced displacement (Houghton 2008:150).

The same 20th century reforms established that there was a social function to the land. For this reason, lands of a certain extension which were left unproductive for a certain period, could be redistributed. This policy in many cases benefitted the discrete advanced of agrarian reform. Once again the “Rural Development Statute” act-ed regressively, by eliminating the extinction of dominion of properties that covered more than 10 family units. In this way it was only possible to eliminate dominion over small unproductive properties, but not large extents of unproductive land! (See: Houghton 2008:151).

All these reforms imposed by the failed Rural Devel-opment Statute were orientated to the legalisation and support of the large landowner, built on the illegal usur-pation of campesino and indigenous lands. Moreover, it was proposed to expand the large estates, on the base of expropriation of campesino properties. But some points referred directly to indigenous land rights. The norm imposed upon reservations and indigenous territories subordination to municipal territorial ordering. Thus, it contradicted the constitutional principle according to which indigenous peoples are the administrative, judicial and governmental authorities of their lands. (Art. 246). In this way the municipal territorial reordering plans can impede the titling of reservations, as has been attempted in the municipalities of the department of Cauca, in or-der to deny principles which recognise the administrative and legal authority over reservations established in Rul-ings C-795 of 2000 and ILO Convention 169, along with Law 21 of 1991 (Houghton 2008:154).

The law likewise impeded titling or enlargement of reservations in the Pacific Coast region. In this ILO Con-vention 169 was explicitly denied with regard to the right to land and the fundamental rights of indigenous peoples of the region: the Embera, Eperara and Awá. Thus, the eviction of these communities from their territories at the hands of paramilitary forces was legitimised. Further-more, it allowed (through the legalisation of fabricated ti-

tles and the adjudication of lands to private businesses), the delivery of these traditional indigenous territories to private firms (Houghton 2008:155).

A central point of the “Rural Development Statute” is Article 124. In this, indigenous efforts to recover ter-ritories, which for five centuries had been usurped from them, was criminalised. This article prevents the Interior Ministry from carrying forward negotiations or expropria-tions of rural properties if efforts have been made to acquire them “by means of violence”. The previous Law 160 of 1994 recognised that, under de-facto occupation, plots could be aquired by INCORA (The Colombian In-stitute for Agrarian Reform). But the Rural Development Statute became an impediment to the recovery of lands which indigenous groups claims as theirs, despite them being in the hands of large landowners. It also had im-plications for the recovery of land, and lands recovered thus far, as it would have allowed for the argument that current reservations, won through the occupation of ha-ciendas created on usurped indigenous territories and reservations, could be considered as taken through “vio-lent action”. Furthermore, the law established the pro-hibition of plots that “seek to be claimed or acquired through violence”. With these measures it criminalised the mere intention to recover a plot of land and legiti-mised punishment on the basis of simple suspicion. The reason why the law allowed the state to act through rapid retitling amidst conflict over land was precisely to avoid situations of violence, such as the one which unfolded in the territorial dispute over the Nilo hacienda, in the department of Cauca (Houghton 2008:156).

Finally, the law limited the indigenous authorities within their own territories to deciding on the distribu-tion of lands among people in the reservation, transfer-ring this town council authority to the ethnic directorate of the Ministry of the Interior. This is absolutely contra-dictory to Article 246 of the Constitution and Convention 169 of the ILO (Houghton 2008:159).

Judicial actions brought forward by social and legal researchers led to the declaration of the unenforceability of Law 1152 of 2007. However, the context in which ap-proval of this law was granted includes other efforts on the part of the Colombian government to deny the rights historically achieved by indigenous peoples.

Opposition to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

On 13 September 2007 in New York, the General Assem-bly of the United Nations promulgated the United Na-tions Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The approval of this document was the result of a pro-cess which dates back to at least 1981, when the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples was set up. In this moment began a process of diplomatic work for the international positioning and recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples. On 13 September 2007, when this effort seemed to be achieving results, the Co-lombian government abstained from voting in favour of the declaration, being the only Latin American govern-ment to do so.

The Declaration was, without doubt, an advance in important issues of recognition of the rights of indig-enous peoples. In particular, it called on states to rec-ognise the “free determination of indigenous peoples”, recognise indigenous control over their traditional ter-ritories, recognise the capacity of these peoples to have at their disposal and decide on the use of the natural resources in their territories and, finally, to demand the demilitarisation of their lands. Although it brings to-gether other important points, these are the elements in which it makes the clearest advances. These were also the most controversial points in the process of approval of the declaration.

The Colombian government justified its posture with the argument that the 1991 Constitution was one of the most advanced in the world in terms of the recognition of indigenous rights; but at the same time, the declara-tion stood in contradiction of constitutional principles. How do we understand this explanation? The Colombian government argued that it had made numerous efforts in the recognition of the indigenous territories and it numbered the hectares of reservation in the country to explain that they make up 29% of the national territory. It neglected to mention that close to 80% of the indig-enous reservations were titled as such before the 1991 Constitution (between 1982 y 1990), while only 20% have been recognised by governments since then (Houghton 2008: 85, 86, 88). It also forgot to mention that 0.2% of rural property owners own 35,000,000 hectares, that is

to say, 52% of the national territory. It likewise forgot that the greater part of these reservations are lands destined for environmental conservation: uplands and tropical forests. Similarly, it overlooked the fact that, for this rea-son, the areas of environmental conservation protected by the Environment Ministry overlap indigenous reserva-tions in large part, obliging indigenous communities to dispute the administration of their territories with the Ministry’s institutions.

Only one explanation can be found in this fallacious argument, according to which Colombia is the leader in recognising indigenous rights and for this reason does not want to support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: the Colombian Con-stitution recognises some indigenous rights, but the Colombian government is not willing to recognise their territorial rights. In order for this to be possible, the 1991 Constitution had already set a trap. It recognised indig-enous rights as part of the Colombian nation, it recog-nised that their cultures are a foundation stone of the multicultural nation, and it recognised their authorities as administrative authorities of the state. It even recogn-ised the indigenous as collective owners of their reserva-tions. But it did not recognise collective ownership of the subsoil, nor the airspace nor the electromagnetic sphere, from which the state can continue administrating the natural resources within the reservations (Vasco 2002).

In other words, the indigenous peoples are important, in that they have ornamental value and attract tourism. But they are not important for the taking of economic decisions, especially where this might involve exercising the right to land.

What will happen after the failure of the dispossession laws? Will the indigenous peoples win?

Suddenly, in March 2009, the Constitutional Court de-clared the “Rural Development Statute”, or Law 1152 of 2007, unenforceable. And in April the Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a press release in which the Deputy Minis-ter for Multilateral Affairs, Adriana Mejía Hernández, in the name of the national government, promised “unilat-eral support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, for its spirit and for the


principles which inspired it” (Colombian Ministry for For-eign Affairs 2009).

What does it say that the government suddenly be-comes respectful of the rights of indigenous peoples? Does it mean that in Colombia the necessary guaran-tees exist for the perseverance of these communities? Despite the importance of the mobilisations, the politi-cal pronouncements and the efforts of the indigenous people to defend their rights, some arguments will help us respond that such guarantees do not currently exist in Colombia.

During the agrarian reform that took place between 1962 and 1972, the regions showing highest levels of land concentration were maintained almost intact. Meanwhile, the indigenous territories of the forests and plains were considered “wastelands” and titles were as-signed to campesino settlers. Between 1982 and 1990 titles were assigned for the greater part of the indigenous reservations of the country (close to 80%), principally in the Amazonian region. But in the Andean region and the Caribbean region, colonial reservations were only recog-nised as a result of the struggles of the indigenous com-munities of the departments of Cauca, Tolima, Córdoba, Caldas and Nariño (Houghton 2008:86). Even though the recovery was initially repressed, with time the reserva-tions acquired legal recognition (Muelas 2005; Vasco Dagua and Aranda 1996). The recognition of Amazoni-an reservations was linked to the complaints of crimes committed against indigenous peoples in the region (the hunting down of indigenous peoples in the region of Orinoquía, known as “guahibiadas”, remains infamous) and some mobilisations in Chocó, Casanare, Meta, Pu-tumayo and Caquetá. The large reservations of Vaupés, Guajira, Amazonas and Guainía, were titled between 1982 and 1989. But the apparent generosity of these titles is connected to interest in environmental conservation in the low regions (especially the forests) in a time when the technology for agroindustrial production in these re-gions did not exist. In the 1990s, this situation began to change, with the announcement, now a reality, of biofuel crops (Houghton 2008:88).

In second place, from the beginning of the first gov-ernment of Álvaro Uribe, the dismantling of state insti-tutions charged with the redistribution of rural land got

underway. The policy that provided orientation for this process was the freeze on both the budget for, and any other efforts at, social redistribution of land in Colombia. In 2005 only 13% of the Ministry of Agriculture’s invest-ment was directed at this goal. In 2007 the figure rose to 27%. But 60% of the resources were invested in infra-structure for large irrigation and natural resource extrac-tion projects that did not benefit the rural, indigenous or campesino populations. With the merger of all the in-stitutions aimed at strengthening the campesino agricul-tural economy and land redistribution into one, Incoder. The combined budget, which in 2001 was 159,366 million pesos, dropped to 6,133 million pesos in 2003. In 2005 it rose again to 71,126 million pesos, which was still less than half the figure invested in 2001. Taken alone, the subsidies for large growers affected by the FTAs repre-sent a rise in the last two years of the Álvaro Uribe Vé-lez government (Houghton 2008:92). The most perverse aspect of this affair is that the Comptroller General of the Nation sustains that the function of Incoder has not been met, especially with regard to its obligation to protect the unquestionable and unalterable status of indigenous territories. Based on the calculations of Mondragón, Houghton argues that the budget for reser-vations executed by Incoder in 2005 was 10% lower than that which the now liquidated Incora enjoyed in its final years of operation (Houghton 2008:93).

According to data from the same author, 488 appli-cations for enlargement and entitlement of indigenous reservations, made between 2001 and 2005, remain un-answered. To this figure must be added 60 applications for restructuring of colonial reservations. Between 2003 and 2008 the government of Álvaro Uribe issued only 92 resolutions of constitution and enlargement of reserva-tions. The regions with the largest indigenous territories awaiting the issuance of titles are Cauca and Amazonas. In the former case, lands which the indigenous popula-tion claim as restitution for historical usurpation which they have suffered as a community are in question. In Amazonas, the issue is one of inconclusive titles for in-digenous reservations (Houghton 2008:104).

The data collected shows that in the Andean region, up until 1991, almost 1,500,000 hectares were titled. Meanwhile, after 1991, titles have only been issued for 910,000 hectares. But only 7.68% of the reservations

are located within the agricultural frontier (that is to say, they are territories appropriate for cultivation). Some 92.32% of the reservations are found in environmental protection zones: forests, plains, grasslands, deserts and uplands, comprising 885,000 people, with 1,290,000 hectares in total. That translates into 1.46 hectares per person or 7.29 hectares per family (Houghton 2008:110). However, in accordance with the former institution In-cora, the minimum extension of land necessary for the subsistence of a campesino family is eight hectares (See: CRIC 2008).

In summary, we have said that indigenous communi-ties seem to be important insofar as the government can use them to attract tourists. Their rights cease to matter when their territories are useful for an economic project which benefits a large landowner, through which he or she can profit from the extraction of natural resources or indigenous labour. For this reason it is necessary for the state to have the capacity to control indigenous ter-ritories, on the basis of the principles of private ownership of land. This situation stands in contradiction of territory being conceded as collective property for the preservation of a people, their culture and the development of an econ-omy based on redistribution and collective production.

Indigenous peoples in the Andean region have ad-vanced significantly in the positioning of town councils as environmental authorities, demanding recognition of Article 246 of the Colombian Political Constitution. In the same sense, we can also find important advances in the life plans of indigenous peoples in Cauca (CRCI 2008). In this way, Andean indigenous peoples have de-fended the status of their authorities in the face of state efforts to impose administrative and judicial control by government institutions, such as the Ministry for the En-vironment and Autonomous Regional Corporations (See: Houghton 2008). In another way, indigenous community institutions operate as environmental authorities with the capacity to demand compliance with their laws by both indigenous people and persons outside their com-munities, including private companies and armed actors. We can point to the indigenous guards who, since 2001, have become a project of many such peoples in Colom-bia, despite having been born in the region of Cauca. Ad-ditionally, some indigenous communities with long-term organisational processes have created courts for the ex-

ercise of jurisdiction in their own territories. And finally, some indigenous peoples have demanded, within the framework of international humanitarian law and auton-omy, their right to act as interlocutors with the armed ac-tors who are present in their territories, against the will of the authorities, to reach agreements for respect for their communities (See: Houghton 2008; Caviedes 2007).

Nonetheless, the resistance to these forms of impo-sition, territorial usurpation and disregard for the rights of indigenous peoples continues to present a major challenge for their organisations. From 2004 to today, indigenous organisations, led by the indigenous commu-nities of the Andean region, have headed up processes of mobilisation which have articulated different sectors of national society around five central demands for the Colombian state:

“(1) Rejection of unconsulted free trade agreements, which threaten sovereignty, territory and culture; (2) Rejection of the democratic security policy, parapolitics, the dirty war, repression, militarisation of social life and the criminali-sation of protest, along with truth, justice and reparation for all crimes committed; (3) Repeal of all laws of expro-priation, along with legal and constitutional reforms, and laws which deny communities their rights and freedoms, among which are the Rural Statute, Law 1152 of 2007, the Mines and Water Plans Code; (4) Compliance with agreements and conventions, among which is compensa-tion for the Nasa people for the Nilo massacre and Decree 982/99, along with the acceptance and implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of 2007; (5) Creation of mechanisms for sover-eignty, peace and coexistence, so that we can elaborate and make a reality of our agenda through the permanent Congress of Peoples” (Granados 2008).

In a moment when the most historically relevant so-cial movements seem to have been suppressed by re-pression and internal contradictions (See: Archila 2005), some authors consider the indigenous movement, and the mobilisation it leads, to be a barrier to the expan-sion of capitalism, due to the exercise of autonomy in their territories and the strengthening of articulation with other social sectors. Nonetheless, if this mobilisation does indicate strengths and advances, the new instru-ments, the expansion of capital and the capacity of large transnational companies to negotiate over the heads of nation states with which they vie for territorial control,


represent new challenges for indigenous organisations. It is fair to ask whether the movement is ready to confront them. B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b l

Gros 1991. “Colombia indígena” (“Indigenous Co-• lombia”). CEREC. Bogotá.

Vasco Luis Guillermo. 2002 [1982]. “El llamado • primer congreso nacional indígena” (“The First Na-tional Indigenous Congress”), in “Entre selva y pára-mo, viviendo y pensando la lucha india” (“Between the Forest and the Uplands: Living and Thinking the Indian Struggle”). ICANH. Bogotá.

Caviedes Mauricio. 2000. “Antropología y movi-• miento indígena. Tesis de grado” (Thesis: “Anthro-pology and the Indigenous Movement”). Department of anthropology, National University.

Caviedes Mauricio. 2004. “Antropología apócrifa • y movimiento indígena”. Tesis de Maestría en an-tropología social, (Social Anthropology Masters The-sis: “Apocryphal Anthropology and the Indigenous Movement”), Humanities Faculty, National Univer-sity of Colombia.

ILO. 1988. Convention 169, United Nations High • Commission for Human Rights. 2002. “The Rights of Indigenous Peoples”. Bogotá.

CECOIN. 1995. “Tierra profanada: Megaproyectos • en territorios indígenas” (“Desecrated Land: Me-graprojects in Indigenous Territories”), Disloque, Santa fé de Bogotá.

Ramos Alcida Rita. 2002. “Cutting Through State • and Class: Sources and Strategies of Self-Repre-sentation in Latin America”, in Warren Kay B. & Jackson Jean E.. “Indigenous Movements, Self rep-resentation and the State in Latin America”. Univer-sity of Texas. Austin.

Padilla Guillermo. (1996). “La ley y los pueblos • indígenas en Colombia” (“The Law and Indigenous Peoples in Colombia”). In Journal of Latin American Anthropology. I (2): 78-79. Special Issue on Ethnic-ity Reconfigured: Indigenous Legislators and the Constitution of 1991 (Editor: Joanne Rappaport).

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lPostrero Gray Nancy. (2005). “Movimientos indíge-• nas Bolivianos: articulaciones y fragmentaciones en búsqueda del multiculturalismo” (“Bolivian Indig-enous Movements: Articulation and Fragmentation in the Search for Multiculturalism”). In López, Luis Enrique and Regalsky, Pablo (eds). “Movimientos indígenas y estado en Bolivia” (“Indigenous Move-ments and the State in Bolivia”). Proeib Andes. La paz.

Guerrero Cazar Fernando and Ospina Peralta Pablo. • (2003). “El poder de la comunidad: Ajuste estruc-tural y movimiento indígena en los andes ecuatoria-nos” (“Power of Community: Structural Adjustment and the Indigenous Movement in the Ecuatorian Andes”) . CLACSO-ASDI. Buenos Aires.

Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Colombia. (2009). • “Gobierno de Colombia anuncia apoyo unilat-eral a la Declaración de Naciones Unidas sobre Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas” (“Colombian Government Announces Unilateral Support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”) See: http://www.cancilleria.gov.co/wps/portal/espanol/!ut/p/c0/04_SB8K8x-LLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os_jQsKAwo2AXYwN_Aws3A08Dd1Pf4CB3IxMvM_2CbEdFAJe-aDs!/?WCM_GLOBAL_CONTEXT=/wps/wcm/connect/WCM_PRENSA/prensa/boletines/gobierno+de+colombia+anuncia+respaldo+unilateral+a+la+declaracion+de++naciones+unidas+sobre+los+derechos+de+los+pueblos+indigenas

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Gathering our determination to work ‘en Minga’Jorge Caballero

“As the night falls a group of indigenous people and campesinos carry a dead friend, signing slogans against the Colombian president. Jesús Nene is one of the deceased. Both were killed by gunshot wounds just a few hours earlier in confrontations with the Anti-Disturbance Police…” This his how CNN international reported the situation ex-perienced by the Social and Community Resistance ‘Minga’ which developed in different parts of the Panamerican Highway in October 2008.

The objective sought by the indigenous groups and social or-ganisations of Cauca was that the public debate promised by Álvaro Uribe Vélez in September 2004, when the Mobile Congress of Social Organisations was launched with a 40,000 strong march in Santander de Quilichao that ended in Cali, actually take place.

Operation Guadua, as the organisation was initially known, was set up on 14 October, but bloodily repressed by presidential order, with the violent usurpation of the “Space of Coexistence, Dialogue and Negotiation” of La María, Piendamó. There, the acts of war un-dertaken by state security forces left one local dead and over 150 injured, mostly with gunshot wounds that would leave many with lifelong scars. Furthermore, eight homes were destroyed and looted, as the mobilised people were branded as terrorists and threats were made to the traditional authorities, leaders and members of the Re-gional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC).

One event that also drew the attention of journalists and the media was the process of justice applied to the army, which the traditional authorities sought to bring to book for having infiltrated their organi-sation. This happening was registered as an independent traditional judgment and President Uribe made reference to it as an incident of torture, affirming that the indigenous should ask forgiveness to the se-curity forces.

Upon considering that the police acted as invading foreign forces, more than 45,000 people, in coordination with social organisations at the national level, decided to march from La María, municipality of Pi-endamó, department of Cauca, and from other regions of the country, to Cali. This mobilisation began on 22 October 2008 after analysing different alternatives. Its objective was to bring about a public debate with President Uribe.

Colours, slogans, songs and other cultural expressions marked the march that arrived from the University of Valle to the square in the heart of the Municipal Administrative Centre, where they waited for the Presi-dent. There were some interesting anecdotes from the gathering, such as Minister Valencia Cossio’s attempt to take to the platform unan-nounced and surprise the crowd, which was thwarted by the guards.

In the end the communities did not accept President Uribe’s pro-posal to stage the debate on a local television station and in a Com-munity Council, and availing of the moderation of two people, one of whom would be delegated by the national government and the other by “la Minga”. The debate should be staged in an open area which would allow the 45,000-plus crowd to attend, so it was decided it would be in the outskirts of the city.

From 11 in the morning to five in the evening, the crowd awaited President Uribe. Upon finding out that he would not be coming, the event was declared finished and, under the direction of the indigenous stewards, an orderly return to the University of Valle headquarters be-gan. Later on, according to a communiqué issued by La Minga: “… the protestors felt surprise and indignation when they arrived at the Univer-sity headquarters and learned that President Uribe also attempted to enter the place and, by force, attempted to rouse the crowds outside against the indigenous in an improvised street meeting staged from the pedestrian bridge used to enter the administrative centre”. This attitude took La Minga by surprise: “… it seems strange (…) given the perma-

* Communications Dept, Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca.

INDEX

Break the spell or more of the same?Gathering our determination to work ‘en Minga’220 ¿Continuidad o desembrujo? 221¿Continuidad o desembrujo?

nent contact (the government) has with the Governor of Valle, who was spokesman and facilitator between the President and La Minga, that he suddenly decides to arrive to the centre when only a few people remain in the area”.

In the face of what some considered a failed event, and with others pointing to the necessity to return to La María and pressure the security forces to abandon nine households - which had been seized irregularly, causing the forced displacement of indigenous and campesino families who lived in them - La Minga decided to establish a new “Space for Coexistence, Dialogue and Negotiation”, and announced a march to Bogotá.

After several thorny events and a commission for integrated rap-proachment arranged by Father Francisco de Roux and Manuel Ramiro Muñoz and delegated by Judge Baltasar Garzón, the government an-nounced it would arrive on 2 November 2008.

The event was announced in the following way: “… As a tribute to the rivers, to nature and to the disappeared peoples or those who are at risk of disappearing thanks to so-called progress or Western civilisation, the indigenous leader Abadio Green initiates the Social and Community Resistance ‘Minga’ with President Álvaro Uribe (...) The national anthem, the songs El Hijo de Cauca (The Son of Cauca) and The Indigenous Guards’ Hymn, will serve as a preamble to the event which will take place from midday to after six in the evening… (And) even though the government has repeatedly reiterated words of respect and dialogue, it states that its military policy is immovable, limiting state action to the presence of security forces, for whom no part of the national territory is forbidden, thus confusing civil institutional actions with military op-erations and, furthermore, restricting indigenous territorial autonomy and infringing international humanitarian law and minimum standards of citizens’ coexistence (…) It has demonstrated that the actions of the security forces in la María were those of an invading army, looting and burning homes, possessions, clothes and food, and reaching the limit of disrespecting patriotic symbols such as the Colombian flag and the symbols of La Minga”.

It was concluded in a subsequent evaluation that the government had not offered any way forward for the problems raised by the So-cial and Community Resistance “Minga”. It was decided to continue the open debate with the President, and for this reason the march began

again on November 9, this time with the final destination set as the coun-try’s capital. From November 19, La Minga once again began its march along the Panamerican Highway, passing through Palmira, Armenia, Caja-marca, Ibagué, Fusagasugá and Soacha, before arriving in the capital.

Once again there was a happening which embodied the President’s obstinacy in opposing this civil protest. Upon arriving in Ibagué, and in contrast to the encouragement and welcome signs which were of-fered by locals, members of the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squad ES-MAD, along with police and troops from the National Army’s Rooke Infantry Battalion, part of the VI Brigade, attempted to block entry to the city centre in the neighbourhood of Boquerón. There they injured 300 women who were leading the mobilisation, among them the then CRIC Senior Councillor Aida Quilcué, who was beaten on the back and run over by cavalry when she attempted to prevent them from harming other women and one minor.

In Murillo Toro Park, Aida lamented that the government had lied with such cynicism to the public: one of the arguments used to block entry to the city had been the protection of victims of the Machin volca-no who, according to President Uribe, were receiving institutional help. This was not just a ruse employed by the leadership to justify its deci-sions. But the victims of the tragedy were kept in concentration camps without access to the media, nor communication with anyone else, for that matter.

The following day, more than 12,000 marchers advanced to Chicoral, where the audience was reminded that in 1972 economic powers and landowners had halted legal agrarian reform and facilitated the continu-ance of land concentration and an exploitative and exclusive economic model.

La Minga summarised its journey as follows:

“… 15 days of marching, social meetings and institutional meetings have marked this journey, in which happiness, sharing, diverse voices, social singing, cultural emblems, the written word and student art have brought cheer to the streets, the establishments and the university walls in a sharing experience of ‘La Minga’, of collective work, and of libertarian yearning. Faces and bodies of all ages, men and women, children and elderly, students and workers, unemployed and intellectuals, passers-by and popular singers gave life to the eternal tradition which leads a process for participation and democracy. Many projections and one voice in unison defying power, despotism and violence, showing that the country has the will to live, the desire for autonomy and thousand-year-old collective sentiments.”

Break the spell or more of the same?¿Continuidad o desembrujo? 223Break the spell or more of the same?Gathering our determination to work ‘en Minga’222

In Bogotá, La Minga reactivated this millenia-old sentiment and rec-onciled the regions, first with its arrival by Motorway 30 from Bosa to the National University, and second, with its march from the National University to Plaza de Bolívar. There afrocolombian communities de-manded their right to exist, and students and local urban community organisations showed their solidarity and felt part of the complaints being made by the rural communities. Together they loudly applauded Aida Quilcué who branded Uribe a liar and demanded the opportunity to seek from the government the rights which historically correspond to the Colombian people.

There in Plaza de Bolívar, Feliciano Valencia argued that, in the face of the conflict and the war that is exterminating those people who march for the truth, La Minga had proposed that the country collect the pains, anguish and hopes of the popular majorities and join together, in order that there be a good harvest and that we have a dignified future for all.

In the capital of the country a meeting of the cabinet was held, along with vice-ministers and their advisers and, according to a spokesper-son for La Minga, it was confirmed that the government maintained its commitment to multinational financial power and that is was afraid of public debate. They also said the government lacked the political will to make the legislative changes required by the social mobilisation, that its policy of privatisation would harden and that its war against those who demand their rights would be stepped up. Furthermore, it had not assigned resources to meet the commitments it had made with social sectors and organisations.

On the first of December, having not found answers, communities, social leaders and indigenous authorities took the decision to leave the capital of the country, stating that:

“ … in the name of honest and dignified people we decided not to put up with any more lies and as popular majorities we understand the need for changes in the country. We opted to return to our places of origin to continue building, between us all, processes of mobilisation, meeting, participation and permanent consultation to make possible the nation that the popular majority dreams of.”

And as an echo, in unison, was heard among the whistles and the general kafuffle: “…We have convened La Minga of the peoples to come together, to work together, in order to propose and to build … ¡Viva la Guardia Indígena!… ¡Viva… viva…viva! ¡Vivan the batons of resistence!

¡Viva… viva…viva! ¡Viva the march of truth and the principles of resis-tance! ¡Viva… viva…viva!”


227Social activism in Colombia, 2002-2009 Social Movements Team-Cinep

(Centre for Investigation and Popular Education)

INDEX


Original text published in May of last year in the special Cinep report “Social Protest 2002 – 2008: Concerning the Public Poli-cies of Uribe Vélez”. This article was updat-ed on 7 August 2009 with information from the Cinep Social Struggles Database.

Social activism in Colombia, 2002-2009Social Movements Team-Cinep

The struggles embarked upon by diverse social movements can be read, as suggested by Melucci (1999), as messages directed at society as a whole, which reveal multiple social conflicts and oblige powers to show themselves, giving them form and face.

If the collective action of diverse social movements is asso-ciated with the struggle for citizenship, for civil and democratic guarantees, for the achievement of forms of participation that translate into new rules and new rights, they also speak to us of the daily lives of the actors, of their utopias and disappoint-ments, of their longing for freedom, of the right of cultures to continue to exist, of the need to establish sustainable relation-ships with nature. From this multiple social conflicts emerge.

Through collective actions, social actors demand answers of the powers that be, but, more importantly, they speak to soci-ety, as “prophets of the present”, with the power of word made into action (Melucci, 1999).

In the pages that follow, we will attempt to identify some of the key points of some of the conflicts that have brought to light social mobilisation happenings in the country during the seven years of the Álvaro Uribe Vélez government, observ-ing their trajectory over time, their geographical locations, their motives, actors, adversaries and means of struggle.

The social struggles that have emerged in Colombia in this time period show that the flags of the president – democratic security, foreign investor confidence and social cohesion – have not even succeeded in obfuscating the severity of the economic problems, the magnitude of injustice and inequity, the evident

INDEX

228 Social activism in Colombia, 2002-2009 229Break the spell or more of the same?

restriction and violation of civil, political, eco-nomic, cultural and third-generation rights. To-day, to the forms of domination and exploitation which have not been resolved in our society,1 must be added others which affect the world of work, the quantity and quality of employment, social life and the environment, derived from pro-cesses of privatisation of public assets, commer-cial opening and, now, the global economic crisis

1 The Colombian government, as a signatory of the Dec-laration of the Fourth Summit of the Americas (2005), committed itself to intensifying efforts to comply with the first Millennium Development Goal: to have reduced, by 2015, the proporation of people living in extreme poverty by 50%. However, a rate of advance slower that that ex-pected has become clear: 20% of the population contin-ues to live below the misery level, while the expectation was that by 2007 this would have been reduced to 17% (CEPAL, 2009: Graphic 25). And in terms of inequality in the distribution of income, Colombia is very close to Brazil, the country which presents the highest level of inequality in the world (Ibid: 27)

Source: Social struggle database, Cinep

which began in late 2007 in the United States and whose repercussions in the global economy were just becoming evident in the final months of 2008.

During the governments of Álvaro Uribe Vé-lez, social mobilisation has been growing and in 2007 it reached the greatest swell seen since 1975. Despite a slight fall in the number of collec-tive actions staged in 2005 and 2006, and a more marked one between 2008 and 2009, the annual average of protests during these seven years is 660, which demonstrates a considerable rise with respect to previous periods.2

From Graphic 2 it is worth noting that Bogotá, being the centre of political, economic and so-

2 Between 1958 and 1974, the average annual number of social mobilisations was 173 (Archila, 2003: 347), between 1975 and 1990 it rises to 476 and between 1991 and 2001 it reached 429 (Social Struggles Data-base-Cinep).

cial power in the country, attracts a significant number of social struggles even though it is not necessarily in this city that the conflict is unfold-ing. As in previous periods, the departments of Antioquia, Valle, Santander and Atlántico are host to a high level of social conflict, although at present this is derived from difference causes: A few years ago, the greatest social conflicts in these departments were associated with labour and agrarian problems, but now it is character-ised by collective actions demanding the pro-tection of rights, humanitarian agreements and justice and reparation for the victims of war. The ten departments that showed the highest levels

Source: Social Struggles Database, Cinep

of participation not only manifest a high level of social action in their capitals, where protestors go to achieve greater visibility, but also more than half of the municipalities that make them up have seen some collective action, with the sole excep-tion of Santander.

Another trend that is shown in this graphic is the concentration of a quarter of all the so-cial struggles (24.66%) of the period along the Atlantic Coast, in the departments of Atlántico, Magdalena, Bolívar, La Guajira, Cesar, Córdoba and Sucre, where conflict associated with the paramilitary power which has penetrated regional politics is present. Moreover, this paramilitarism


has undertaken actions against the campesino organisations and ethnic groups in the area, as much to evict them from their lands – thereby ac-centuating land concentration in rural areas – as to clear the way for megaprojects. Elevated lev-els of administrative corruption, and the growing problem of cities and towns with lacking public and social services, in part thanks to the arrival of successive waves of displaced persons, fur-ther contributes to making the Caribbean Coast a more problematic place than the Macondo3 of magic realism.

3 Macondo is a fictional town in the writings of Gabriel García Marquez

Source: Social struggles database, Cinep

In the department of Cauca the struggle for land, which was set off by the indigenous move-ment and which has, in recent years, become ar-duous and frontal, has become evermore pressing. This contributes to the greater number of collec-tive actions which locate this department among the most significant areas of social conflict.

Of the 1,120 municipalities in the country, a little more than half manifest some social ten-sion through protests.4 Social mobilisation, more than contracting due to the effects of decentrali-

4 This data does not take into account department-level struggles, for example those started off by civil servants who declared in their reports that this was the context of certain protests.

sation – recall that this was proffered as one of its objectives – or due to the policies of the cur-rent government, has expanded in the national geography.

What has unleashed so much social protest? The following graphics detail both the motives and the collective actors behind this scenario during the period under observation:

Urban settlers have the highest participation in social action during the period under observa-tion. Their collective actions have been driven by a wide range of motives which, in order, cover the persistent violation of their civil, political, social, economic, cultural and third-generation rights;

Source: Social struggles database, Cinep

the irregular - if not inexistent - provision of do-micilary public services and constant increments in tarriffs; the implementation of public policies considered harmful; the lack of urbanised land and housing; scarce access to social services, particularly health and citizens’ security; environ-mental deterioration; the poor state of roads and the lack of adequate physical infrastructure; de-ficient management of municipal authorities and constant problems of corruption in distinct pub-lic bodies. These social actors have been taking advantage of commemoration events not only to reactivate the collective memory with regard to events or persons of significance, but also to ex-press discord in the face of a diversity of issues.


Lastly, solidarity with other actors in situations of conflict finds in collective action a vehicle for ex-pression.

Salaried workers are the second largest group, after urban settlers, while unions were the most frequent issue provoking mobilisations. Of the to-tal number of protest actions, only 135 were linked to charges or petitions raised against businesses. More than half (51.5%) were presented over vio-lations of legal or conventional norms and 26% were directed against public policies – especially against processes of privatisation of state compa-nies, making them part of the struggle for public partimony. They have been firm opponents to the signing of free trade agreements and the conse-quent national “delaborisation”, along with the rise in uemployment and informal employment. They have likewise opposed rights violations (to life, to liberty, to union organisation and to protest). Growing unemployment and violence were the factors which mainly provoked union mobilisation. The “uribista” labour reform, Law 789 of 2002, supposedly aimed to create 640,000 new jobs in the four years following being issued. It has not had the results hoped for: Uribe received an un-employment rate of 14.2% in 2002 and towards the end of 2009 it was at 11.7%: 2,428,000 Co-lombians were without work, 241,000 more than in August of the previous year, according to DANE (El Espectador, 1 October 2009, 7).

The form of contracting that has grown most is temporary and insecure employment. Temporary work agencies account for 21% of work contracts and outsourcing (service-provider contracts) ac-counts for 17%. Business owners are happy with temporary employment and the flexibilisation of contracts, and for this reason they give their un-restricted support to Uribe (Colombian Associa-

tion of Industrial and Personnel Relations, Acrip, “Investigación nacional de salarios y beneficios” [“National Investigation of Salaries and Benefits”], 2007, La República, 2 August 2007, 10A).

To this situation is added the alarming rise in informal employment: in 2007 approximately 14% of salaried workers became self-employed, in the most part due to being sacked. Even in the private sector 33% of personnel have no access to severance packages or payments. Only 1% of informal salaried workers are affiliated to family compensation regimes. Self-employment went up from 28% in 1998 to 32% in 2006, while the real earnings of these workers fell from $663.282 to $525.245. Between 1998 and 2008, informal work-ers went from 3.6 million to 5.2 million. There are 2.8 million workers who earn less than the legal minimum wage (Fedesarrollo Social Survey, 2008), 5.6 million workers are outside the social security system, and two-thirds of salaried workers do not make contributions to health or pension regimes (Mauricio Cárdenas before the 44th Assembly of the Colombian Confederation of Chambers of Commerce, El Nuevo Siglo, 8 November 2007, A22; “Close to 60% of the business sector avoids social security payments”, Sergio Clavijo, Presi-dent of Anif, La República, 7 December 2007, 3A).

The final disaster is now in plain view: “This government has made investment into the ulti-mate aim of economic policy. It created, for ex-ample, a large number of fiscal incentives for investment with the supposed aim that jobs would come as an addition. But the jobs never arrived. (...) The Ministry for Social Protection has not presented a single coherent initiative to con-front the rise in unemployment” (El Espectador, 1 May 2009, editorial).

If the labour reforms of the current govern-ment have had such impact in the mobilisation

of salaried workers, the plans aimed at self-suffi-ciency in public education and academic reforms have been explosive in their impact on student mobilisation, which has been accompanied by new forms of organisation which have achieved a leadership which places them in third place in the rankings. The significant presence of the student body (University, technical and secondary) owes itself to the defence of the right to education, interest in elevating the academic quality of in-situtions, having sufficient numbers of adequate teachers and reasonable physical installations. They have thus been fighting for a social policy which places at the centre of its concerns the right to universalisation of education, and for this reason they have repeatedly protested against fiscal policies which reduce transfers from the central state to the municipalities. The right to life, to peace, to autonomy, to organisation and to protest have also mobilised the Colombian student body, with the slogan “not in my name”, in an allusion to the support President Uribe of-fered to President Bush in his war against Iraq.

The impetus shown by President Uribe in seeking to defeat militarily the insurgency and its economic and fiscal strategies, and thereby grow the resources destined for war, were accom-panied by speeches and actions which aimed to reduce resources for social investment, as was revealed in student protests which denounced: the governmental proposal that public education be self-financing; the reduction in monies as-signed to education centres by regional authori-ties in their annual budgets, when they weren’t “forgotten” altogether; legal projects in the Con-gress which affected the students of SENA (The National Training Service), one which modified training contracts and reduced the support they received during work experience in businesses,

and another which established that 20% of SENA resources, destined for technological develop-ment, would be transferred to Colciencias (Admin-istrative Department of Science, Technology and Innovation), with the argument that this would strengthen technological innovation vital for the country’s development. The student movement also exposed the proposal contained in the 2006 National Development Plan which demanded that universities concede in the payment of pension liablities, which ostensibly reduced the budget available for academic activities.

The huge deficits faced by universities and public educational insitutions, at both the na-tional and regional levels, received no solution from central government transfers. The govern-mental formulas suggested were loans, declara-tion of bankruptcy or recognition of the inviability of some educational centres, resulting in various regional universities finding themselves on the brink of closure, as were various university hos-pitals which were being liquidated. The students argued that if the government wanted peace it should agree to address issues like health and poverty for the most poor.

While self-financing was constituted along the horizon of educational social policy, the interfer-ence in the internal affairs of educational centres grew. University autonomy, the battly cry of stu-dents and professors since the beginnings of the 20th century in Latin America, was destroyed with the imposition of academic and student statutes, changes in the mechanisms for the appointment of rectors and deans, the merging of faculties and schools, and the equally harmful governmental directive to place the security of educational cen-tres in private hands, which was seen by academ-ic communities as an attempt to have networks of informants (“the government’s million friends”)


infiltrate educational institutions. Various days of national student, professor and worker protests were staged to demand adequate state finance, academic and administrative autonomy, the em-ployment welfare of workers, student welfare, defence of human rights and to exclude higher education from FTA negotiations.

But university autonomy has not only been threatened by governmental decisions. In various universities of the Atlantic Coast the intimidation comes from paramilitaries who have imposed rec-tors, teaching staff and even academic materials, and in the public universities of Antioquia and Valle these same agents of war have made death-threats against members of university commu-nities (student and union leaders). Students, professors and workers have rejected fear and stigmatisation and, through symbolic actions, have determined to defend the university as a space for life, liberty and knowledge.

To the paramilitary project’s attempts to limit freedom of expression, to control free thought, has been added the presidential order, issued at the end of May of the previous year, according to which the police are charged with ensuring com-pliance by entering in any university campus in which there is violence, and arresting and charg-ing those who commit acts of vandalism.

The day after this order came to light, a na-tional day of protest was called against the militarisation of educational centres, the crimi-nalisation of student protest and the governmen-tal stigmatisation of students as terrorists, and to remind the national leadership that the majority of public educational institutions were suffering budget deficits.

Women and the LGBT sector have focussed their collective actions on the demand that their rights to life, integrity and personal liberty be

respected, along with protection of rights that are infringed by the dynamic of war, and the de-nouncement of all forms of private and public violence against women, children, young people and other vulnerable sectors. A few days after Uribe took power in 2002, in the midst of a dem-onstration in Bogotá, the President was asked to make a commitment to Colombian women with a state policy in favour of political and negotiated solutions to the armed conflict, as this issue was seen in a different way by women.

Their movement has inscribed the problems of gender in the context of a society at war and has placed special emphasis on the violations of women’s rights in conflict zones. Such women are victims not only of armed confrontation but also of sexual abuse, physical mistreatment, blackmail and psychological violence from the combatants, along with forced displacement. This is particu-larly so when one takes into account the fact that more than half the displaced population is wom-en and, of this percentage, approximately 31% are heads of household (Sánchez, 2006: 35).

It is for these reasons that, at the centre of the reflections of women’s movements concern-ing the situation of war and violence in the coun-try, and of their commitment to peace, there lies a question about the role women have played in the war and with regard to combatants, together with a determination not to renounce the memory of the past as “forgotten crimes always threaten to be repeated”. The proposals of the women’s social movement are characterised by pacifism, the fight against militarism and the construction of an ethic of nonviolence (Ibid: 73). These are expressed in symbolic acts of civil disobedience, especially in the framework of international dates such as international women’s days and the In-ternational “No To Violence Against Women” Day,

along with solidarity demonstrations in support of other populations besieged by the conflict and mothers who publicly manifest their pain at the kidnapping or disappearance of a family member, demanding the right not to form part of any of the belligerent actors.

For their part, independent workers – who have been rising in number thanks to the growth of unemployment, and who are employed in a wide variety of low productivity, mostly street-level jobs – have focussed their protests on the policies of fiscal control of contraband and the urban policy of restriction of illegal transport which have been issued by the central govern-ment and implemented by local governments. They demand legal recognition of their activities, and demand respect for the right to work and the right to access to contributive social protection. But the insecurity of their economic activities is concominant with the transitory nature of their forms of organisation.

The country’s campesinos, for almost two de-cades, have been forced to prioritise their demand for protection of the right to life, integrity and lib-erty over their traditional demands for land. In re-cent years, these have no longer been expressed as the need for rural plots of land, but instead as the demand for an integrated agrarian policy which takes into consideration the importance of small-scale agricultural production, technical as-sistance, sustenance pricing, commercialisation, soft loans, and refinancing of debts. However, the current government privileges agro-industrial in-vestment, above all with regard to biofuels, from which it hopes to obtain important economic yields. It drives the creation of associative rural enterprises through which it grants campesinos land a comodatum (as “compensation”), admin-istrated by “successful businesspersons” (with a

similar proposal, the Minsiter for Agriculture An-dres Felipe Arias, attempted to evict hundreds of displaced people from the Carimagua estate). This formula forms part of the so-called “agrar-ian reform by the market” which, of course, does not affect the agrarian counter-reform which has been driven forward by drug trafficking and paramilitarism for over two decades. It is worth remembering that by virtue of both phenomena, campesinos, indigenous communities and afro-colombians have seen over 6,000,000 hectares of their land expropriated (Reyes, 2008: 23).

Another pillar of the forced dispossession of Colombia’s campesinos has been the issuing of laws which seek to regulate and standardise the use, consumption and distribution of products which have traditionally been in the hands of small and medium-sized campesino production and whose consumption has been part of the basic basket of popular foods. Such is the case of raw milk, whole sugar and campesino poultry. The argument made by the Ministries of Agricul-ture and Social Protection regarding the indis-pensable implementation of “normalised” and hygienic processes - that they lead to benefits for consumers and producers and contribute to public health - has been received with approval by agricultural trade associations, farmers, pro-ducers and large-scale retailers, who are the ones that can tackle the demands of these policies.

However, the campesino associations, through their struggles – which, although sporadic, have managed to mobilise large contingents of small rural producers – have indicated that they don’t question the sanitary argument (what’s more, they consider it appropriate), but they have shown that the main concern of the government is meeting the rules and regulations of interna-tional standards in order to enter into free trade


agreements and comply with the norms of the World Trade Organisation. These measures, given here by way of example, form part, together with laws regarding land, woodlands, water and the deepening of agrarian reform for the market, of the process of commodification of social goods which has characterised the current government and which affects other social sectors such as ag-ricultural workers5 and the indigenous.

The high levels of conflictivity faced by ethnic groups and the large capacity they have had to bring visibility to them are inversely proportion-al to the low number of collective actions they have protagonised over these seven years. It is thus that cultural and ethnic rights (to territori-ality, and the preservation of cultural practices regarding health, education, justice, self-determi-nation, among others) are now part of the public agenda. The most significant position among the country’s various social struggles is occupied by the indigenous and, among them, the indigenous movement of Cauca which from 2004 set out to liberate mother earth in a systematic effort to re-cover traditional territories expropriated over the course of history by land owners, drug traffickers and new entrepreneurs. In 2005 this movement, which brings together distinct indigenous commu-nities in the department, carried out 18 “mother earth” recovery operations, wresting land from large landowners. But if this is a strategic objec-tive of the indigenous movement, it is not the one which has led to the greatest number of collec-tive actions carried out in the period observed. As with the majority of actors, the demand which

5 The measures in question not only contribute to the dete-rioration of conditions in agricultural employment – which was already insecure – but also contribute to low demand for manpower in the farming sector.

has accounted for almost a quarter of the collec-tive actions of all the indigenous peoples in the country, has been directed at the combatants, demanding that they not involve them in their war, that they recognise their neutrality regarding the belligerent parties and, above all, that they respect their right to life. (according to La Alian-za, 2008, 1,244 were murdered between 2002 and 2007). In second place, the indigenous communi-ties have demanded that the government comply not only with the commitments made with them, but also with the recommendations of national and international bodies regarding the protection that should be provided to indigenous peoples.

In this period, civil resistance actions carried out in opposition to guerrilla appropriations, “Las Mingas” for life, dignity and for the recovery of bodies of indigenous and other community mem-bers massacred in incursions by various illegal armed groups, stand out. The indigenous have been the greatest detractors of the laws con-cerning uplands, water, woodlands and diverse megaprojects, due to the implications these have both in terms of the expropriation of sacred in-digenous lands and in terms of the deterioration of sources of water and oxygen, which sustain life for all human beings.

Afrocolombian groups have also demanded their cultural rights and of these two stand out: the right to territory and the right to their own education. This has been a long hard fight in a society which has shown, precisely in the heat of the protest actions of ethnic groups, that the idea of racial purity still persists.

In the 1980s the settlers of San Andrés and Providencia presented one of the most significant civic movements in the county, Sons of the Soul (SOS), which centred on a demand for a Racial

Statute which would reaffirm their belonging to Colombia but which would also recognise their cultural differences (of language, religion and cul-tural practices) and would preserve their lands which were being torn away by continentals work-ing in business and later in drug trafficking. These demands have been persistently ignored by the central government and in recent years a new movement, with a distinct character, has emerged: in the face of governmental indolence regard-ing their multiple and longstanding problems, to which have been added Nicaragua’s attempts to claim the archipelago as part of its territory, it sets its sights on separatism. The dreadful rela-tions between President Uribe and his opposite

number in Nicaragua have made day-to-day rela-tions between the population of San Andrés and the countries of Central America, with which they have unavoidable cultural and historical links, even more tortuous.

The struggles protagonised by the forcibly displaced alert us to the insecurity of conditions being experienced by those trying to survive the loss of their lands, and persistent non-compliance with agreements signed with those state entities which are charged with executing the law of dis-placement. Moreover, the victims of the internal armed conflict have recently achieved capacity for mobilisation, organisation and visibility, de-spite the persecution they have been subjected


to by their attackers; their central demand is a hu-manitarian agreement making possible the return of their kidnapped family members, the return of disappeared persons alive or the delivery of their remains. To these have been added the demand for truth, justice and comprehensive reparations.

Public and collective actions carried out by retail and transport trade associations express rejection of the imposition of fiscal and transport policies, of the lack of domiciliary public services, of the poor state of roads and the demand for toll payments. During the current government, there have been 55 transport stoppages, which have paralysed the circulation of cargo around the country, and across borders, for several weeks. These efforts have aimed to make the national government force the business sector to comply with the conventions agreed, and demanding that they draw up a fuel pricing policy coherent with international prices.

Even though the number of actions organised by prisoners was low, 77% of them demanded the protection of rights which cannot be violated, despite their imprisonment. The most frequent demands of the prison population concerned the overcrowding of penetentiaries (which has risen disproportionately with the mass and arbitrary detentions realised during the Uribe Vélez admin-istration), the lack of access to health services, mistreatment by the wardens, and the demand for due process. In the particular case of politi-cal prisoners demands their recognition as such, which is denied by the current government.

The demobilised (from the guerrillas and, predominantly, the paramilitaries) have protest-ed against the recurrent failure to comply with the opportune delivery of subsidies and monies destined for productive projects, offered by the

presidential reinsertion programme. At the end of 2003 the then-Minister for the Interior explained the delays by the supposed success of the pro-gramme, which had fuelled the growing number of demobilised persons, but which led to man-agement difficulties. At the end of 2007, the pro-tests continued to show up government failure to meet commitments with regard to work, health and education, while also denouncing Law 395 of March of that year for dismantling the guarantees given and thereby substantially modifying their integration into civil life.

To conclude, we can see in Graphic 5 who have been the principal adversaries of social struggles during the period observed:

55% of the demands presented by diverse social actors during the seven years under observation were directed at executive organisms at various lev-els: 28% to entities of the national executive (and an additional 3% to military forces, the police and state security bodies), 21% to entities of the munic-ipal executives and 6% to departmental executives. These data compel us to ask certain questions: Where does the favour of the current leadership lie? What happened to the supposed intention of political, fiscal and administrative policy to har-monise social protest and connect the popula-tion’s demands with their local governments? Why do successive governments not attend to the de-mands of the population? It is likewise relevant that 15% of the protests during the period were directed at irregular armed groups and we must also que-ry the achievements of the “democratic security” policy and the fight against terrorism. 9% of social struggles had private entities as their adversaries, a figure very close to the 8% which were directed at state and mixed companies at the national, re-gional and municipal levels (in their majority, public service providers or health and education entities).

As we noted at the beginning of this article, collective and public actions carried out by di-verse social actors, more than disturbing the public order, have the explicit intention of ex-pressing on the public stage the concrete de-mands of specific population groups who, in the face of relative deprivation, feel that their needs and desires require the attention of powers that can satisfy them. But these actions also have the effect of bringing to light the networks of social, economic, political and cultural conflict which ex-ist, even though governmental and business sec-tor bodies aim to evade or deny, rather than to process, them. Taken together this recalcitrance on the part of the powerful contributes to delays, with the great risk that in time they will grow in volume, with new conflicts being added, and an increasingly difficult conflict scenario, that is in-creasingly difficult to confront, will thus emerge.

B i b l i o g r a p h y B i b lArchila, Mauricio, “Los movimientos sociales • (1958-2006)” (“Social Movements 1958 – 2006”), (2008), in Ocampo, José Fernando (editor) (2008), Historia de las ideas políticas en Colombia (The History of Political Ideas in Colombia), Bogotá, In-stituto Pensar y Taurus.

Cepal, “Indicadores seleccionados (Documento de • discusión en la Quinta Cumbre de las Américas, 1994-2009)” (“Selected Indicators: Discussion Doc-ument in the Fifth Summit of the Americas, 1994 – 2009”), Puerto España, 15 - 17 April 2009, San-tiago de Chile, United Nations.

La Alianza: Colombian Platform for Human Rights, • Democracy and Development, Permanent Civil So-ciety Assembly for Peace, Coordinación Colombia-Europa-Estados Unidos, “Periodic Universal Study of the Human Rights Situation in Colombia”, 10 December 2008.

Melucci, Alberto, “Acción colectiva, vida cotidiana • y democracia” (“Collective Action, Daily Life and Democracy”), (1999), México, El Colegio de México.

Reyes, Alejandro, “El rescate de la tierra” (“The • Rescue of the Land”), in El Tiempo, 19 September 2008, Bogotá.

Sánchez, Olga Amparo, “Nuevas formas de resisten-• cia civil. De lo privado a lo público. Movilizaciones de la Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres, 1996-2003” (“New Forms of Civil Resistance. From the Private to the Public. Mobilisation of the Pacific Women’s Route, 1996 – 2003”), (2006), Bogotá, Pacific Women’s Route.