Left gains despite paramilitary terror

Colombia, that suffering nation in Latin America that daily witnesses crimes by its paramilitary regime—massacres, indiscriminate detentions, disappearances and constant state repression—held presidential elections on May 28. Some 2.6 million people voted very clearly against the U.S.’s closest ally in the region, incumbent President Alvaro Uribe, in a vote that was also a rejection of neoliberalism and the U.S. free trade agreement.

Although Uribe won, allowing him a second term until 2010, for the first time in that country’s history the left won second place in a national election. It is now established as the main opposition group, displacing the Liberal and Conservative parties, which for nearly a century have alternated in that nation’s highest office.

A closer look at this election process shows that the unarmed, center-to-left movement—composed of trade unionists, human rights advocates, women, youth and student groups, Indigenous, peasants, Afrocolombians and other progressive forces—formed a coalition, the Alternative Democratic Pole (ADP). Sen. Carlos Gaviria, a law professor and former president of the Constitutional Tribunal, was their presidential candidate and received 22.04 percent of the vote against Uribe’s 62.2 percent.

What was behind Uribe’s much publicized “landslide victory”? First, a 55 percent abstention. The majority of the 26,731,700 eligible voters did not exercise that right, something not new in Colombia. In fact, when Uribe was first elected in 2002, absenteeism was around 54 percent.

Climate of repression

Second, the Primero Colombia (Colom bia First) coalition, Uribe’s base after he left the Liberal Party, had the aid of paramilitaries who organized a reign of terror, particularly in places that had shown strong support for Gaviria’s ADP. Colom bians from the ADP reported that paramilitaries were threatening the residents of some areas, as in Ciudad Bolivar, a very poor neighborhood in Bogotá.

Neima, an activist this writer met in Colombia, told WW: “Residents charged that members of paramilitary groups were going house to house, threatening that if even one vote went to the left, they would pay for it.”

Several reports say that more than 10 activists from the ADP have been assassinated over the last few weeks.

In 2004 Uribe had initiated a process of negotiations to “demobilize” the AUC, a para military group. Some 30,000 AUC mem bers supposedly gave up their arms in a very publicized international media event in the small town of Santa Fe de Ralito. Paramilitary boss Salvatore Man cuso, well-known for masterminding count less crimes, shed crocodile tears in front of the cameras.

The government’s negotiations with the AUC have been widely criticized for basically exonerating the crimes they have committed, giving the paramilitaries total impunity for horrendous assassinations and massacres. To these accusations, Uribe has responded by calling it the “cost of peace.”

Now these “demobilized” paramilitaries have formed other organizations, among them the Autodefensas Nueva Generación (New Generation of Self Defense). Iván Cepeda Castro, from the Lawyers Collec tive Jose Alvear Restrepo (LCJAR), a human rights advocacy group, wrote in a Colombian magazine: an answer to the last column that I wrote ... I received an intimidating message from the General Staff of a group that calls itself the New Generation of Self-defense Farmers. They said that they are more active than ever and that they will use ‘all means necessary’ to obtain their aims.”

According to Cepeda Castro, other threatening messages have been sent to LCJAR and to students and professors at the University of Antioquia.

In a May 23 report, Amnesty Inter national still mentions the Colombian paramilitaries as a force the government should take action against to prevent impunity.

In another May 23 report entitled “A turbid environment that the President could clear with just a few words,” the Colombia Coordinating Committee in Europe and the U.S. says: “The recent declarations of the President of the Republic, of the Vice-president of the Republic and the High Commissioner for Peace encourage the occurrence of attacks against social leaders and human rights advocates; they polarize unnecessarily and dangerously the electoral debate, during the last weeks of campaign; and avoid their obligation to clearly talk about the support that the paramilitary groups frequently give to their reelection campaign.”

But it is not just the paramilitaries that exert harassment and repression against the civilian population. On May 17, 11 days before the elections and several days after the beginning of a National Alternative Summit in La Maria in Cauca province, the Colombian army invaded this Indigenous settlement, which in 1999 had been declared a space for dialog and negotiation for civilian society.

The summit had been called by the Indigenous, peasant and Afrocolombian national movement in an effort to oppose the free trade agreement with the U.S. and Uribe’s reelection, and also to demand thorough agrarian reform. The Colombian Army’s response was to burn ranches, infrastructure and all the vehicles in the community. Indigenous leader Pero Pascue was assassinated. Some 60 people were injured and dozens disappeared and/or detained. Afterwards, the army destroyed everything that remained in the La Maria settlement. (www.censat.org)

Dubbed the “most peaceful” elections ever by the international commercial media, the Colombian election was held with the participation of more than 220,000 security forces, deployed to nearly 10,000 polling stations across the country.

Not mentioned in Uribe’s speech: FARC

Uribe, a lawyer trained at Harvard and Oxford, has promised to crush the Revo lu tionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). During his years in office, the Patriot Act and the Act of Democratic Security were passed—laws aimed against the armed insurgency but applied in general to any opposition to his dictatorial rule, armed or unarmed.

The FARC have not been destroyed. On the contrary, they have managed to adapt and respond to the government’s aggression. As a result, Uribe, in his speech after the elections, did not even mention the armed insurgency.

One of the first to congratulate Uribe was U.S. President George W. Bush. White House spokeswoman Eryn Witcher said, “The president affirmed his strong support for Colombia in its continued battle against narco-terrorism, in moving forward on our free-trade agreement and in helping our democratic friends in the region.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also congratulated Uribe for his victory in “free, fair and secure elections,” wishing him “even greater success” in the second term.

Rice said, “Our relationship with the gov ernment and people of Colombia is a particularly close one.... It is based on mutual agreement that open societies and free mar kets are the best ways to meet the needs and expectations of our people, and protect their fundamental rights and liberties.”

The majority of Colombian people, more than 50 percent poor, may have a different view.

Colombia not only satisfies U.S. corporations’ greed for profits from the substantial wealth of this South American nation but it also plays a crucial role in U.S. plans for hegemony in the region, particularly its efforts to destabilize the Bolivarian Revo lution in Venezuela. Colombia ranks third, after Israel and Egypt, in U.S. military aid.

But progressive people in Colombia, like Neima, see the election results as something that “gives us more strength to continue the struggle” and “will not stop our increasing hopes and dreams.”