Franz writes: "The joy of the international community and the mainstream
press was overwhelming when, on August 24, after fifty-one years (or
seventy, depending on the definition) of armed conflict, the Colombian
government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced a
final peace agreement."
A mural in Medellín, Colombia. (photo: Deúniti/colectivo creativo/Flickr)
The Ends of Peace in Colombia
By Tobias Franz, Jacobin
27 September 16
Colombias peace deal is backed by elite interests but it will also open
up political space for the Left.
The joy of the international community and the mainstream press was
overwhelming when, on August 24, after fifty-one years (or seventy,
depending on the definition) of armed conflict, the Colombian government and
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced a final peace
agreement.
After four years of negotiation and far-reaching deals on rural land reform,
political representation for demobilized FARC members, alternative solutions
to the production of illicit crops, and recognition and reparation for
victims, the Colombian public is asked to vote for or against the deal.
While a sí vote will be the likely outcome of the referendum on October 2,
implementation and enforcement of the agreements will be largely contested.
As Colombias pro-landlord brand of neoliberal development has not been an
issue of debate at the negotiation table in Havana, a negotiated peace deal
will not bring inclusive growth for the countrys rural poor.
Both the contestation of the peace agreement and the lack of serious debate
over the character of Colombias economic growth model stem from the balance
of power in Colombian society. While competing factions of the Colombian
ruling class had achieved a bargain over political power for much of the
1990s and early 2000s, this changed with President Juan Manuel Santoss
decision to embark on peace negotiations with the FARC.
Driven by transnational class interests, Santoss policy agenda is a
complete shift away from ex-president Álvaro Uribes paramilitarized
pacification tactics. Uribe and the rest of the narco-capitalists of large
landowners and cattle ranchers are dependent on the state of war and they
will oppose the peace deal with everything theyve got.
Elites, Power, and Development
Historically, the landed and industrial elite factions of Colombias ruling
class have dominated the country politically. Populist contestation and
mobilization against this hierarchic form of class rule was met either with
violent repression or with institutionalized autocratic rule during the
Frente Nacional years of 1958 to 1974, the time of a coalition between
wealthy Colombian liberals and conservatives.
The traditionally larger weight of Colombias landed oligarchy in relation
to the industrial elite faction within the ruling coalition, and the
abandonment of state-led advanced industrialization policies, resulted in
Colombias industrial decline and an ever-increasing expropriation of rural
land by elites.
As the political exclusion and economic marginalization of most Colombians
increased (most notably the grand-scale dispossession of peasants through
the legalized land appropriation of the Chicoral Pact of 1972), leftist
organizations, and especially the FARC, became the leading force in
contesting the traditionally dominant elite bargain in Colombia.
Impoverished peasants who had been forcibly displaced from their land sought
protection and found representation in the FARC, fueling a massive expansion
of the guerrilla group in the 1980s.
At the same time, several economic and financial crises in Colombia lead to
widespread rural poverty. Many peasants were forced to harvest illicit crops
in order to keep their land and survive. Especially following the reduction
of funding streams from the Soviet Union and Cuba, the FARC started to play
a key role in the illicit economy.
However, the peasants harvesting the crops and producing the raw material
for the drug economy remained at the lower end of this illicit value chain.
The main beneficiaries were cattle ranchers, some large landowners, and the
drug traffickers controlling the majority of the production, processing, and
distribution chains.
This emerging bourgeois class of narco-capitalists rapidly increased their
wealth and power in the 1980s and 1990s, heavily contesting Colombias
traditional pact between landed oligarchs and urban industrialists. Álvaro
Uribe, the son of a large landowner who had been kidnapped and killed by the
FARC, led this emerging class in their fight not just against the
traditional elites but also against the FARC.
With increasing violence in Colombia often playing out in rural areas
where FARC commandos challenged the power of emerging narco elites the
different Colombian elite factions combined forces to violently oppose any
FARC maneuvers (insurgent or other). The US Foreign Office and the
Department of Justice played a crucial role in forming the alliance of
landed, industrial, and narco-capitalists, providing finance and
intelligence for the Colombian state and military and paramilitary
organizations.
Using paramilitary groups to violently protect landed wealth and the cocaine
industry, the US-supported Colombian ruling class intensified the war
against the FARC, which left approximately two hundred thousand dead and
around six million people displaced. The objective of US involvement was not
primarily to combat leaders of Colombian drug cartels (as portrayed in
Netflixs recent hit series Narcos), but rather to destroy one of Latin
Americas last-standing resistance movements and to advance Washington
Consensusstyle policy prescriptions. The resulting violent
paramilitarization of control over large parts of Colombia and the
neoliberalization of the economy only intensified forced displacement and
rural poverty.
A Paradise for Narco-Capitalists
Colombias radical shift to neoliberalism in the late 1980s did little to
incentivize the stagnating economy. Narco dollars, laundered through land
deals in Colombias cattle-ranching hinterlands and through real estate and
construction in the countrys urban areas were the primary drivers of
economic growth. Narco-capital and the interest of integrating Colombia into
global capitalism became the institutionalized bridges between the
industrial, landed, and extractive capital on one side, and the finance,
real estate, and service-based economy on the other.
The dominance of these class interests, achieved by gathering different
elite factions around the axis of narco-capitalism and transnational
accumulation patterns, temporarily stabilized the Colombian polity and
economy. While economically the FARC participated in and benefited from
Colombias narco-capitalism, for the most part they remained political
outsiders to the ruling coalition.
The formation of the Patriotic Union a left-wing political party that
emerged in the 1980s as a result of the peace talks between the Betancur
government and the FARC did little to increase the guerrillas political
representation. Factions of the ruling elite that opposed any form of
political influence of the FARC reacted with increased paramilitary
repression: between 1985 and 1997 more than four thousand party members,
including elected councilors, congressmen, and senators were assassinated or
disappeared.
Meanwhile, the United States further supported the Colombian ruling
coalition between narco elites and transnational capitalists through the $7
billion military aid package Plan Colombia. The resulting militarization of
the Colombian state and the fumigation of illicit crops in the agrarian
frontier zones not only intensified forced displacement, but marked the full
integration of Colombia into the US war on drugs.
Uribes election as president in 2002 was the pinnacle of the power of the
narco-capitalists and their neoliberalized economic model underwritten by
cocaine capital. Any opposition to this development model was violently
repressed by paramilitary violence and systematic human rights abuses
through extrajudicial executions.
Political Shifts, Prospects for Peace
The election of Juan Manuel Santos as president in 2010 marked a major shift
in Colombias polity and the countrys approach to achieving peace. Unlike
his predecessor, Santos is a descendent of a traditional oligarchic family
and now unites the growing transnational capitalist elite self-conceived
modernizers of Colombia behind him.
But Santoss decision to start negotiations with the FARC did not come
exclusively from an interest in further opening the Colombian economy to
global capitalism and attracting FDI into extractive sectors, low-wage
services, and labor-intensive industries. It also reflects changing dynamics
of power and a break in the elite bargain between the traditional,
now-transnational elites and the narco-capitalists.
With Uribe and colleagues contesting the current power constellation after
being excluded from the ruling coalition, and the FARC increasingly
fragmented and at its politically and militarily weakest point in recent
history, what are the prospects for sustainable and inclusive peace and
development?
One important consideration is agrarian reform. This started the Colombian
conflict and is vital in a lasting solution to it. But as large landowners
have acquired new haciendas in areas where violence and conflict were
drivers of falling land prices, the distribution of land is now more unequal
than ever.
Neo-paramilitary structures that remain in place for protection of landed
class interests and a structural lack of investments in smallholding
agribusinesses will deter displaced peasants from returning. However, the
agrarian question is no longer solely placed along the lines of land
redistribution and capitalist transformation. Today, Colombia has been fully
integrated in global production and supply chains of agricultural
commodities and their derivatives, such as rice and palm oil.
The second vital issue for lasting peace is political representation and
disarmament of the FARC. The FARC have every reason to be suspicious of
promises by the Colombian state of protected demobilization and political
representation.
While the fears of more extrajudicial killings were addressed by creating
so-called transitory rural normalization zones to allow reincorporation of
guerrillas into civil society, the actual implementation of these zones will
be contested. Paramilitary organizations, far-right politicians, and
factions of the armed forces supporting paramilitary structures will do
their best to undermine a peaceful demobilization and disarmament process.
The peace process has already opened political space for new social
organizations for popular mobilizations under somewhat improved democratic
conditions. But 112 members of the Patriotic March have been assassinated
since its foundation in 2012. Another seven thousand have been detained, and
paramilitary groups have killed over three hundred peasant leaders in 2015
alone.
A complete demobilization of FARC members is doubtful, as many combatants
opposing the peace deal will remain in the jungle and/or join other
guerrilla movements that have been excluded from the negotiations, such as
the National Liberation Army (ELN). The involvement of many FARC members in
lucrative drug production, trafficking, and distribution activities also
complicates a full demobilization.
The ambitious plans of dismantling and prosecuting drug trafficking
organizations will thus be implemented with difficulties. Narco-capitalists
as well as drug-trafficking factions of the FARC oppose the peace treaty;
the anti-trafficking and production aspects of the deal undermines their
raison dêtre. Therefore, substantial changes to Colombias cocaine-induced
accumulation processes are unlikely.
The agreed substitution of illicit crops for legal agricultural activities
and immediate assistance plans, however, are a welcome change from the
confrontational and militaristic eradication approaches. Additional
commitment to medium- and long-term investments in in development in rural
areas are needed for a more sustainable solution.
The bilateral ceasefire and reparations for victims are however welcomed and
necessary steps for achieving peace and reconciliation in Colombia. Both
sides of the conflict have been ignoring the voices of the victims for too
long. Victims organizations found a voice in Havana, negotiating
recognition and compensation agreements. These are substantial improvements,
worthy of celebration.
While it is doubtful that the signing and (potential) ratification of the
peace agreement will create sufficient conditions for Colombia to fully
break the vicious cycle of rural violence, repression of the political left
and peasant organizations, and economic marginalization, the peace deal has
significant merit. A sí to the peace deal would further open up political
space for movement-building. Popular mobilizations against Colombias
neoliberal model have increased in recent years, giving the new social
organizations hope that upcoming struggles will be fought on by political
and civil society rather than through armed conflict.
Hope for a Colombia in peace rests on the ability of these movements to
unite in the struggle for sustainable and inclusive developments for urban
and rural Colombians.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
A mural in Medellín, Colombia. (photo: Deúniti/colectivo creativo/Flickr)
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/colombia-farc-santos-uribe-paramilitaries
-drugs/https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/colombia-farc-santos-uribe-paramil
itaries-drugs/
The Ends of Peace in Colombia
By Tobias Franz, Jacobin
27 September 16
Colombias peace deal is backed by elite interests but it will also open
up political space for the Left.
he joy of the international community and the mainstream press was
overwhelming when, on August 24, after fifty-one years (or seventy,
depending on the definition) of armed conflict, the Colombian government and
the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced a final peace
agreement.
After four years of negotiation and far-reaching deals on rural land reform,
political representation for demobilized FARC members, alternative solutions
to the production of illicit crops, and recognition and reparation for
victims, the Colombian public is asked to vote for or against the deal.
While a sí vote will be the likely outcome of the referendum on October 2,
implementation and enforcement of the agreements will be largely contested.
As Colombias pro-landlord brand of neoliberal development has not been an
issue of debate at the negotiation table in Havana, a negotiated peace deal
will not bring inclusive growth for the countrys rural poor.
Both the contestation of the peace agreement and the lack of serious debate
over the character of Colombias economic growth model stem from the balance
of power in Colombian society. While competing factions of the Colombian
ruling class had achieved a bargain over political power for much of the
1990s and early 2000s, this changed with President Juan Manuel Santoss
decision to embark on peace negotiations with the FARC.
Driven by transnational class interests, Santoss policy agenda is a
complete shift away from ex-president Álvaro Uribes paramilitarized
pacification tactics. Uribe and the rest of the narco-capitalists of large
landowners and cattle ranchers are dependent on the state of war and they
will oppose the peace deal with everything theyve got.
Elites, Power, and Development
Historically, the landed and industrial elite factions of Colombias ruling
class have dominated the country politically. Populist contestation and
mobilization against this hierarchic form of class rule was met either with
violent repression or with institutionalized autocratic rule during the
Frente Nacional years of 1958 to 1974, the time of a coalition between
wealthy Colombian liberals and conservatives.
The traditionally larger weight of Colombias landed oligarchy in relation
to the industrial elite faction within the ruling coalition, and the
abandonment of state-led advanced industrialization policies, resulted in
Colombias industrial decline and an ever-increasing expropriation of rural
land by elites.
As the political exclusion and economic marginalization of most Colombians
increased (most notably the grand-scale dispossession of peasants through
the legalized land appropriation of the Chicoral Pact of 1972), leftist
organizations, and especially the FARC, became the leading force in
contesting the traditionally dominant elite bargain in Colombia.
Impoverished peasants who had been forcibly displaced from their land sought
protection and found representation in the FARC, fueling a massive expansion
of the guerrilla group in the 1980s.
At the same time, several economic and financial crises in Colombia lead to
widespread rural poverty. Many peasants were forced to harvest illicit crops
in order to keep their land and survive. Especially following the reduction
of funding streams from the Soviet Union and Cuba, the FARC started to play
a key role in the illicit economy.
However, the peasants harvesting the crops and producing the raw material
for the drug economy remained at the lower end of this illicit value chain.
The main beneficiaries were cattle ranchers, some large landowners, and the
drug traffickers controlling the majority of the production, processing, and
distribution chains.
This emerging bourgeois class of narco-capitalists rapidly increased their
wealth and power in the 1980s and 1990s, heavily contesting Colombias
traditional pact between landed oligarchs and urban industrialists. Álvaro
Uribe, the son of a large landowner who had been kidnapped and killed by the
FARC, led this emerging class in their fight not just against the
traditional elites but also against the FARC.
With increasing violence in Colombia often playing out in rural areas
where FARC commandos challenged the power of emerging narco elites the
different Colombian elite factions combined forces to violently oppose any
FARC maneuvers (insurgent or other). The US Foreign Office and the
Department of Justice played a crucial role in forming the alliance of
landed, industrial, and narco-capitalists, providing finance and
intelligence for the Colombian state and military and paramilitary
organizations.
Using paramilitary groups to violently protect landed wealth and the cocaine
industry, the US-supported Colombian ruling class intensified the war
against the FARC, which left approximately two hundred thousand dead and
around six million people displaced. The objective of US involvement was not
primarily to combat leaders of Colombian drug cartels (as portrayed in
Netflixs recent hit series Narcos), but rather to destroy one of Latin
Americas last-standing resistance movements and to advance Washington
Consensusstyle policy prescriptions. The resulting violent
paramilitarization of control over large parts of Colombia and the
neoliberalization of the economy only intensified forced displacement and
rural poverty.
A Paradise for Narco-Capitalists
Colombias radical shift to neoliberalism in the late 1980s did little to
incentivize the stagnating economy. Narco dollars, laundered through land
deals in Colombias cattle-ranching hinterlands and through real estate and
construction in the countrys urban areas were the primary drivers of
economic growth. Narco-capital and the interest of integrating Colombia into
global capitalism became the institutionalized bridges between the
industrial, landed, and extractive capital on one side, and the finance,
real estate, and service-based economy on the other.
The dominance of these class interests, achieved by gathering different
elite factions around the axis of narco-capitalism and transnational
accumulation patterns, temporarily stabilized the Colombian polity and
economy. While economically the FARC participated in and benefited from
Colombias narco-capitalism, for the most part they remained political
outsiders to the ruling coalition.
The formation of the Patriotic Union a left-wing political party that
emerged in the 1980s as a result of the peace talks between the Betancur
government and the FARC did little to increase the guerrillas political
representation. Factions of the ruling elite that opposed any form of
political influence of the FARC reacted with increased paramilitary
repression: between 1985 and 1997 more than four thousand party members,
including elected councilors, congressmen, and senators were assassinated or
disappeared.
Meanwhile, the United States further supported the Colombian ruling
coalition between narco elites and transnational capitalists through the $7
billion military aid package Plan Colombia. The resulting militarization of
the Colombian state and the fumigation of illicit crops in the agrarian
frontier zones not only intensified forced displacement, but marked the full
integration of Colombia into the US war on drugs.
Uribes election as president in 2002 was the pinnacle of the power of the
narco-capitalists and their neoliberalized economic model underwritten by
cocaine capital. Any opposition to this development model was violently
repressed by paramilitary violence and systematic human rights abuses
through extrajudicial executions.
Political Shifts, Prospects for Peace
The election of Juan Manuel Santos as president in 2010 marked a major shift
in Colombias polity and the countrys approach to achieving peace. Unlike
his predecessor, Santos is a descendent of a traditional oligarchic family
and now unites the growing transnational capitalist elite self-conceived
modernizers of Colombia behind him.
But Santoss decision to start negotiations with the FARC did not come
exclusively from an interest in further opening the Colombian economy to
global capitalism and attracting FDI into extractive sectors, low-wage
services, and labor-intensive industries. It also reflects changing dynamics
of power and a break in the elite bargain between the traditional,
now-transnational elites and the narco-capitalists.
With Uribe and colleagues contesting the current power constellation after
being excluded from the ruling coalition, and the FARC increasingly
fragmented and at its politically and militarily weakest point in recent
history, what are the prospects for sustainable and inclusive peace and
development?
One important consideration is agrarian reform. This started the Colombian
conflict and is vital in a lasting solution to it. But as large landowners
have acquired new haciendas in areas where violence and conflict were
drivers of falling land prices, the distribution of land is now more unequal
than ever.
Neo-paramilitary structures that remain in place for protection of landed
class interests and a structural lack of investments in smallholding
agribusinesses will deter displaced peasants from returning. However, the
agrarian question is no longer solely placed along the lines of land
redistribution and capitalist transformation. Today, Colombia has been fully
integrated in global production and supply chains of agricultural
commodities and their derivatives, such as rice and palm oil.
The second vital issue for lasting peace is political representation and
disarmament of the FARC. The FARC have every reason to be suspicious of
promises by the Colombian state of protected demobilization and political
representation.
While the fears of more extrajudicial killings were addressed by creating
so-called transitory rural normalization zones to allow reincorporation of
guerrillas into civil society, the actual implementation of these zones will
be contested. Paramilitary organizations, far-right politicians, and
factions of the armed forces supporting paramilitary structures will do
their best to undermine a peaceful demobilization and disarmament process.
The peace process has already opened political space for new social
organizations for popular mobilizations under somewhat improved democratic
conditions. But 112 members of the Patriotic March have been assassinated
since its foundation in 2012. Another seven thousand have been detained, and
paramilitary groups have killed over three hundred peasant leaders in 2015
alone.
A complete demobilization of FARC members is doubtful, as many combatants
opposing the peace deal will remain in the jungle and/or join other
guerrilla movements that have been excluded from the negotiations, such as
the National Liberation Army (ELN). The involvement of many FARC members in
lucrative drug production, trafficking, and distribution activities also
complicates a full demobilization.
The ambitious plans of dismantling and prosecuting drug trafficking
organizations will thus be implemented with difficulties. Narco-capitalists
as well as drug-trafficking factions of the FARC oppose the peace treaty;
the anti-trafficking and production aspects of the deal undermines their
raison dêtre. Therefore, substantial changes to Colombias cocaine-induced
accumulation processes are unlikely.
The agreed substitution of illicit crops for legal agricultural activities
and immediate assistance plans, however, are a welcome change from the
confrontational and militaristic eradication approaches. Additional
commitment to medium- and long-term investments in in development in rural
areas are needed for a more sustainable solution.
The bilateral ceasefire and reparations for victims are however welcomed and
necessary steps for achieving peace and reconciliation in Colombia. Both
sides of the conflict have been ignoring the voices of the victims for too
long. Victims organizations found a voice in Havana, negotiating
recognition and compensation agreements. These are substantial improvements,
worthy of celebration.
While it is doubtful that the signing and (potential) ratification of the
peace agreement will create sufficient conditions for Colombia to fully
break the vicious cycle of rural violence, repression of the political left
and peasant organizations, and economic marginalization, the peace deal has
significant merit. A sí to the peace deal would further open up political
space for movement-building. Popular mobilizations against Colombias
neoliberal model have increased in recent years, giving the new social
organizations hope that upcoming struggles will be fought on by political
and civil society rather than through armed conflict.
Hope for a Colombia in peace rests on the ability of these movements to
unite in the struggle for sustainable and inclusive developments for urban
and rural Colombians.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
