These were the words of Rodrigo
Londoño, head of Colombia’s FARC guerrillas, as he choked back tears and shook
hands with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in Havana June 23.
He gave voice to the hopes of
millions of Colombians.
Last week’s announcement of a
bilateral ceasefire removed the biggest stumbling block to ending more than
fifty years of ongoing armed conflict in Colombia, the longest in Latin America
and one of the longest in the world.
More than two generations of
Colombians have grown up under a state of war, and across the country there is
a deep yearning for peace. An estimated
 |
| One of the "Mothers of the Disappeard," who demonstrate weekly in Medellin. |
260,000 people were killed during the conflict; as many as 7 million people were displaced, about 14 percent of the Colombian population.
With the ending of armed
hostilities, demands for equality and justice will shift to the political
realm. As Gonzalo Sánchez, director of Colombia’s Center
for Historical Memory noted:
“After spending half a
century accustomed to the sound of bullets, now we will have to get used to the
sound of social mobilization in the streets.”
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, best known by its acronym, FARC, began as a peasant-based group in
1964, during a time when Marxism was on the rise throughout Latin America.
Decades of military offensives, backed by U.S. military aid and often disguised
as a “war on drugs,” failed to defeat the guerrillas. At the same time, FARC
was unable to achieve its goal of armed revolution. As it turned to kidnappings
and drug trafficking to finance its operations, FARC’s popular support
declined.
In 2012, under a dialogue overseen
by Norway and Cuba, peace negotiations began in Havana. A tentative accord was
announced last fall, but thorny details remained. Last week’s announcement of a
bilaterial ceasefire signaled an end to the biggest controversy.
The Colombian government hopes for
a signed peace accord by July 20, the anniversary of Colombia’s 1810
declaration of independence from Spain. The country’s Constitutional Court will
outline procedures for a public vote on the peace accords, most likely a “yes”
or “no” plebiscite in the fall.
There are an estimated 8,000 armed
fighters with FARC. The handing over of weapons will begin with the
signed accord, in a process to be monitored by the United Nations. An amnesty
covers guerrillas who do not face allegations of serious human rights
violations, and there will be a process to re-incorporate them into civilian
life.
 |
Street art in Comuna 13 in Medellin, a neighborhood subjected to a military
offensive to root out FARC guerrillas in 2002.
The slogan reads: Military intervention, never again.
|
Human rights observers note that ending the war may be the easy
part. How to win the peace? How to ensure peace with social justice, especially
in volatile rural areas far from the media spotlight?
Some of the complexities are
similar to those in other countries that have moved from war to peace. How will
thousands of armed guerrillas readjust to civilian life? How will the
government’s military adapt to a new mission beyond defeating the guerrillas?
Other questions are more specific
to Colombia.
• Will Colombia’s
right-wing paramilitary squads step into potential power vacuums in former
guerrilla strongholds?
• Will the
country’s indigenous, Afro-Colombian and peasant populations, who have borne the
brunt of the killings and displacement and yet were not part of the Havana
negotiations, be integrated into the peace process?
• Will the
Colombian government follow through on promises of land reform, or will it
continue its policies that favor mono-crop agribusiness and mining interests
who have long coveted Colombia’s rich natural resources?
The threat of increased
paramilitary activity is the most immediately pressing. For instance,
in a thirty-day period during February and March, thirty people were
assassinated by paramilitary groups, according to Justice for Colombia, a
British NGO. Many of them were community or political activists, often organizing
against illegal mining, or victims of “social cleansing” that targets
“undesirables” such as homeless people, orphans or drug addicts.
“All these assassinations
and the increase in threats and acts of intimidation indicate the extent of
paramilitary presence in the country and raise serious concerns about
guarantees for social and political activists in the country,” the report noted.
 |
| A member of "Mothers of the Disappeared." |
In the long term, dealing with land
reform is perhaps the most essential. A press release from Amnesty International stated:
“Forced displacement and
the misappropriation of land, often through violence and intimidation, have
been a defining feature of Colombia’s internal armed conflict. These human
rights violations and abuses have targeted above all Indigenous,
Afro-descendant and peasant farmer communities.”
For now, however, the focus is on
the peace accord. At a time when many of the world’s hot spots seems to be
spiraling into further violence, Colombia offers hope.
No one disputes the hurdles ahead.
But as author and academic Mario Murillo said of the bilaterial ceasefire, on “Democracy Now,” “You’d have to be really
cynical not to recognize the importance or significance.”
Barbara Miner is a
Milwaukee-based writer who spent several months in Colombia last fall.
No comments:
Post a Comment