Bogotá

The February 4th march has been, as was expected, a decisive success in terms of attendance.

The reports speak of a million people in Bogotá alone.

People have marched in more than 50 Colombian cities and 130 cities throughout the world.

The atmosphere was very peaceful and people from all social backgrounds lined the streets, from the rich who live in the nice neighborhoods to the inhabitants of the most degraded ones. Undoubtedly a historic event, it just may be considered once of the largest marches in the country’s history. There have not been any reported problems with public order. The march’s slogan was; “No more FARC, no more kidnappings”, but many people also marched with signs against the other armed actors and in favor of a humanitarian accord.

The families of the kidnapped were accompanied by a few hundred people who had decided not to march and instead organized a liturgy in the Church of the Voto Nacional. Mayor Samuel Moreno, former President Samper and former mayor Lucho Garzón, among others, accompanied the families.

It was an unusual day of civic celebration for Colombia; the country united for peace. This unheard of event—which took place in a country that generally does not express itself in the streets en masse although it is one of the most conflict-ridden nations on earth—can be interpreted in at least three ways: rejection, manipulation and the exploitation of pain.

Rejection

As Von Clausewitz, one of the most recognized and knowledgeable scholars of military history and war philosophy, said: “war is the continuation of politics by other means.” But Colombia is one case where the reverse is true, as Foucault first noted: “Politics is the continuation of war by other means.” The Colombian conflict is one that embraces everything and justifies everything. There are now six generations that have been born and raised in the context of the war and have become accustomed to assassinations of public figures, violence, disappearances, displacements and kidnapping. The lack of a “post-conflict” period for the last 60 years has made it impossible for Colombians to “vomit out the dead”, as Nobel Prize winner José Saramago suggested in a recent visit to the country. That is, Colombians have not been able to analyze the conflict in a peaceful context that would allow them to learn from their errors and not continue to repeat them.

A conflict of such duration has few points of reference in modern times, which makes comparison and analysis of the social effects on the population difficult.

But a conflict of such length has also demonstrated that there exists, in the dominant classes, an incapacity—if not a lack of will—to put an end to the conflict. This is something that contrasts strongly with the majority of the population’s desire and hope to live in a “normal country”. This is possible because Colombia is a broken country. On the one hand, the cities, turned towards modernity, luxury and a globalized economic model; on the other hand, the countryside, the rural areas, that are held back and suffocating in war and violence.

Kidnapping is one of the few things that has brought the conflict to the urban upper-middle classes. The armed actors physically transfer politicians and regular people to the middle of the jungle and of the war, creating an umbilical cord that unites the two parts of a Colombia broken by violence.

In this context, the march of February 4th, organized by a Facebook group, is a novelty, one of the few occasions in which the population has gone into the streets en masse.

Colombians have internalized the impotence and pain of their country and are straining to erase the conflict from their minds.

For this reason, the strong reaction of society before the inhuman conditions of the hostages in the FARC’s hands is positive and could mark an awakening. The march was a rare moment of spontaneity and a genuine rejection of the violence that dominates this country.

But it is a rejection of a conflict that these people do not know. A majority of Colombians ignore the forms and numbers of the violence in their country and the character of the armed actors. An organized and conscious civil society, able to call for a mass march of rejection, does not exist. Instead, strong powers take advantage of this spontaneous sentiment to guide it towards their interests.

Manipulation

President Uribe came to power in 2002 after four years of an unfruitful and interminable peace process. A process born with great expectations transformed into a deception and that was undoubtedly buried as a consequence of the actions of September 11th, 2001. The Colombian elites were convinced that under the new international order it was possible to militarily defeat the guerrillas, evading the social change that a peace treaty with the guerillas would have inevitably entailed.

Uribe denies the existence of a conflict, transforming the political armed actors into simple terrorists and thus portrays the armed option as the only solution.

He constructs a political discourse where everything makes sense and is justified because there exists a terrorist enemy that must be annihilated. Then come the military plans and the intensifying battles. The final victory always seems like a matter of time.

However, this posture does not allow for a negotiated solution or for third parties. There only exist Uribistas and guerrillas. Without an enemy, the belligerent president and his government would have to withdraw; without a conflict, the Colombian army would have to renounce the enormous amount of U.S. aid that reaches 6.5% of the GDP and its almost unlimited power over the civil population.

The reality is that the government and the Colombian elite do not want peace. While there is war there is business.

Uribe has been transformed into the absolute counterpoint to the guerrillas, which are now framed as simple terrorists and the incarnation of evil. The armed conflict is banalized and paramilitarism is justified as a minor evil compared to the horrors of the FARC.

To sustain this discourse, the president has made much use of the complacent media. The majority of Colombians are never informed of what is happening beyond their TV screens. The official vision of the armed conflict has become the only reality, the guerrillas and their crimes the only enemy.

Klaudia Girón, professor of Pschology at the Javeriana University, comments: "In this context it is evident from the disfigured image of the conflict, that has been shaping an evermore misinformed and terrorized country […that] the majority of the people do not know and do not want to know about atrocities committed by the State or the paramilitaries."

Thus when Colombians take to the streets and march, they do so against the only enemy that they know. Consequently they humiliate the victims of other armed actors and legitimate the president’s belligerent project.

It is clear that the Government wants to take advantage of the march to reinforce its image as the country’s principle anti-FARC referent, thus making way for an eventual second presidential reelection.

This is evident, for example, from the fact that the Minister of Defense, Juan Manuel Santos, obligated his employees to take to the streets, or that the Secretary and Ministry of Education supported the march by paying teachers who brought their students to demonstrate. It is worth noting that these same government bodies branded the students and professors, who a few months ago marched in protest against cuts to the education budget, as terrorists.

This has generated a strong debate in Colombian society between those who wanted to march against all violence and all armed actors and those who are unaware of the existence of State and paramilitary violence, such as the march’s youth organizers. They confuse the critics of their initiative (victims, social organizations and the left) with friends of the FARC.

Analyzing this debate, many analysts think that there is a polarization in the country. They are probably mistaking disillusionment and growing intolerance, for polarization. But a true division does not really exist. On the contrary, the country aspires to ideological animism, the homogenization of thought, the creation of an exclusive enemy and a single truth. This single truth cancels out and fails to recognize history, eliminating those with different ideas, including the very families of FARC captives.

John Stuart Mill expressed it thus: "Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it, is the formidable evil; there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices."

For this reason this spontaneous and positive march against an objectively heinous crime—and against an anachronistic organization that has lost contact with reality and with the population—can end up supporting the violence in Colombia. This mindset moves the country further away from peace by placing the blame on the victims of State and paramilitary violence and on human rights activists. As the aggression against Senator Piedad Córdoba—who is in favour of negotiating an end to the conflict and is the intellectual author of Clara Rojas and Consuelo de Perdomo’s liberation— shows, those who hold unpopular opinions do so at their own risk.

Iván Cepeda, president of the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes, stated that “The call for an end to one form of violence excludes others. One could say that there are two types of victims: the victims of kidnapping and of the guerrillas, and the others who have become nonexistent victims.”

The exploitation of pain

When the organizers refused to march against all forms of violence and decided to march only against the FARC, they failed to recognize the victims of the other armed groups and thus rendered them invisible. One recognizes the atrocity of over 700 FARC kidnappings, but the reality of a country destroyed by State and paramilitary violence is suppressed—even worse, it is legitimized. The fact that the paramilitary bosses supported the March 4th mobilization, through a communiqué, is proof of this suppression.

In Colombia 120,000 people—according to figures by the National Commission of Reconciliation and Reparation (CNRR)—have been identified as victims of paramilitary violence, by the Director of Public Prosecutions’ Department of Justice and Peace. There have been an estimated 14,000 disappeared at the hands of the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia). But the AUC does not take hostages—they fill mass graves!

Former paramilitary boss Salvatore Mancuso recognized he is guilty of over 112 massacres with a total of 1,370 victims. His friend, alias Don Berna, revealed the location of over 300 victims of terror, buried in 11 mass graves.

Up until December 2007, 935 mass graves had been discovered.

The paramilitary boss Éver Velosa (alias H.H), a mid-level commander in Medellín, admitted alone his responsibility for 1,200 homicides committed over a year and a half. In front of the families of the victims who came together to discover the fate of their loved ones, disappeared for years, Velosa stated, “there were nights when we killed up to 20.”

The paramilitary boss Jorge 40 accepted responsibility for various massacres in the north of the country, where a hundred residents were assassinated. This includes the massacre of Ciénega Grande, Santa Marta, where more than 60 fishermen were executed in 2000. His outfit is responsible for 768 disappearances and 200 massacres.

The alias Alemán disclosed the location of 50 corpses in mass graves and confessed to over 100 crimes.

Until now, only 63 out of some 2914 accused paramilitary soldiers have voluntarily confessed. This gives an idea of what paramilitary terror has done in Colombia.

With the AUC, the Uribe administration has advanced a very questionable peace process. Within this framework, the Supreme Court ruled that AUC members cannot be charged with the crime of “sedition” because they have not acted against the State, but instead in its favor.

More than 60 Uribista congress members and politicians are effectively involved in the scandal known as “parapolitics,” accused of having financed and created paramilitary groups. Among these is the cousin of the President, Mario Uribe.

Speaking only of 2008, between December 31st and January 14th, the Movement of the Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE), reported that alleged ultra-right wing paramilitaries had assassinated 12 people, disappeared nine, forcibly moved 120, and wounded three.

“It would seem that these victims do not exist,” wrote Iván Cepeda Castro in a letter to President Álvaro Uribe. In reference to the February 4th march, he added that “Neither the professional associations, nor the Church nor the mayors, nor the governors, nor the big media have organized marches against these crimes.”

In the letter, he continued: “When will you [President Uribe] pronounce yourself against these crimes against humanity that paramilitary groups continue to commit? When will there be a solemn speech to condemn the massive forced disappearances that have brought millions of fellow countrymen to mass graves and hidden cemeteries?”

In regards to the Colombian army, the latest report by the Center for Research and Popular Education (CINEP), surely the most important database tracking the Colombian conflict, paints a horrifying picture.

In the second half of 2006, those responsible for grave violations of International Humanitarian Law (disappearance, extrajudicial homicide, torture, and more) are as follows: police and armed forces responsible for 66% of the violations; paramilitaries (who are demobilized, according to the government) responsible for 24%; and the guerrillas for only 4%. In the first half of the year, the data indicates that 44% were committed by state actors, 35.5% by paramilitaries, and 12% by the guerrillas. As always, when paramilitary violence deceases, State violence increases and vice-versa.

Things did not change much in 2007. The police and armed forces are responsible for 385 grave violations of International Humanitarian Law, other State actors for 62, the paramilitaries for 325, and the guerrillas for 22.

How can one march against the crimes of guerrilla forces without marching against the crimes of the State and the paramilitaries? How can the Colombian State call someone a terrorist without referring to itself in the same way?

The February 4th march exploits the pain of all of the conflict’s victims. It is no coincidence that not a single victims' or human rights organization supported the mobilization. (Translation: ALAI)

- Simone Bruno is an Italian journalist