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The continuity of para-militarism, fissures in the factions in power and peace
José Honorio Martínez / Monday 25 April 2016 / Español
 

In the same way that the government of former president Álvaro Úribe Vélez denied the existence of social conflict in Colombia the current government, according to the statements of the Minister for Defence Luis Carlos Villegas, denies the existence of para-militarism. Maybe para-militarism isn’t actively supported by the government of Juan Manuel Santos, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Para-militarism has been a pillar of the dominant political regime in Colombia, the oligarchic State, since the 1960s. As Giraldo states in the official report of the Historic Commission on the conflict in Colombia and its victims (completed late in 2015):

“The counterinsurgency strategy of the State has been founded upon para-militarism. The official version of the phenomenon places its origin in the 1980s and explains it as arising from the reaction of rural land owners and agricultural and business associations to confront guerrilla actions, in response to which the land owners and businessmen in rural areas decided to create private armies to defend themselves, from which came the name commonly used to refer to such groups, “self-defence forces”. This remains the essence of the official version today. However, the real origin of para-militarism, as proven by official documents, can be traced back to the Yarborough Mission, an official mission to Colombia by officials of the Special Warfare College of Fort Bragg (North Carolina) in February 1962. The members of the commission left a secret document, accompanied by an ultra-secret annex, containing instructions for the formation of mixed groups of civilians and military personnel, trained in secret to be utilized in the event that the national security situation were to deteriorate…”

The formation of paramilitary forces was itself preceded by the creation of private militias at the service of large landowners in the late 1940s and early 1950s that ravaged the countryside during “the Violence” (a brutal civil war that claimed over 200,000 victims and displaced millions of people from rural areas)… The prolongation of the strategy of para-militarism over time and the role that it has played in the neoliberal era, violently displacing rural communities and taking over their land for agricultural, mining, energy and infrastructure mega-projects or to extend the domains of large cattle ranches, signified the construction of a para-State exercising dominion over large swathes of the territory, population and institutions of the country.

While it may well be that the paramilitary armies no longer receive orders directly from the government, that doesn’t mean that substantial sectors within the military establishment and other State institutions don´t still consider them to be allies in the fight against the counterinsurgents and therefore continue supporting them and maintaining the relationship of subordination. Considered in these terms, para-militarism isn’t just a group of criminal gangs that has infiltrated State institutions but rather represents a continuation of the armed elements of the para-State.

The ongoing assassination of human rights defenders, farmers and militants of the opposition (leaders and members of political parties and social movements opposing the traditional political parties and their offshoots) in the country denotes the maintenance of the same pattern of extermination practiced over the decades, at times varying in degree and intensity but always following the same methodology and objectives as outlined and implemented by the doctrine of National Security: anti-communism…

Giraldo describes the essence of this doctrine as follows: “In the arsenal of the doctrine of National Security, fundamentally comprising books (in the Library of the National Army), editorials and articles appearing in the Journal of the Armed Forces and in the Journal of the Army, discourses, presentations and reports of high level military commanders and their advisors, as well as in a collection of Counter-Insurgency Manuals marked as secret or confidential, “communists” are explicitly identified as trade unionists, farmers who don´t sympathize with or who are reluctant to cooperate with military operations on their farms, students that participate in street protests, militants of non-traditional or critical political forces, defenders of human rights, proponents of liberation theology, and sectors of the population generally that are not in conformity with the status quo…”

The recent shutdown imposed by paramilitaries in six provinces in the northwest of the country emphatically refutes the claims of the Minister for Defence that “there are no paramilitaries in the country today and we don´t want them to reappear.” In fact, para-militarism is not and has never been combated by the Colombian State. The supposed demobilization process carried out in 2005 pursuant to the “Law of Justice and Peace” formulated by the government of Álvaro Úribe was in fact the consolidation and modernization of the paramilitary project: legitimating the beneficiaries of the violent displacements of rural communities, laundering enormous amounts of money obtained from illegal economic activities, guaranteeing a substantial degree of impunity for the crimes committed and reinforcing the power of these elements of the para-State to continue activities such as extortion, imposing justice and controlling rural and urban communities, in one word governing the areas under their dominion.

The ways in which prominent personalities of the Establishment such as Fernando Londoño Hoyos … have campaigned against the peace dialogues being conducted in Havana Cuba and the manner in which the peace process has been the object of constant criticism by the most reactionary and retrograde political sectors of the country, has been accompanied by a systematic and meticulously planned campaign of assassinations of popular leaders throughout the “national territory”.

Para-militarism is a palpable truth of the oligarchic State in Colombia, prodigiously supported by substantial sectors of the dominant classes and landlords in particular. These same sectors of the ruling classes are now denouncing a campaign of political persecution being carried out against them by the government of Juan Manuel Santos, notwithstanding that they fully enjoy all of their civil rights as well as unconditional support by large parts of the mass media as demonstrated by the march that was held on 2 April 2016 during which participants carried placards and banners condemning the restitution of land to the victims of forced displacements, the prosecution of politicians and military officers allied to paramilitary groups, and the dialogues associated with the peace process more generally. For these factions within the traditional ruling classes whose interests revolve around the maintenance of the para-State the possible opening of a political regime that could result from the peace process constitutes a double threat: the first is that they perceive that the end of the armed conflict would abolish the most important basis for and justification of their lucrative economic activities, namely the fight against the insurgency; the second threat they perceive is that if the people that make up the armed insurgency are permitted to participate in the political processes on equal terms they will capture a significant portion of local and provincial political and administrative power.

The refusal of the government to recognize the continued existence of para-militarism and its connections to factions within the State is indicative of the equivocal nature of the liberal, progressive and modern sectors of the ruling classes when they are obliged to confront the retrogressive sectors dominated by the landlords and their associates. This situation has been a constant in Colombia´s history as demonstrated by the governments of Lopez Pumarejo and Lleras Restrepo when, instead of decisively supporting agrarian reform, they ceded to the pressure exerted by the landlords and the agricultural associations and ended up accompanying the processes of plunder and violence committed against farmers and entire rural communities and regions.

The lack of coherence within the progressive elements of the Colombian oligarchy and their unwillingness to commit themselves to taking the difficult but necessary steps if peace and social justice are to be achieved contrasts with the fanaticism and stubborn obsession of the reactionary elements of the oligarchy to keep the country in pre-modern political conditions. Today, in the midst of the crisis that the blind pursuit of policies of dependent capitalism has generated, the reactionary sectors of the oligarchy are agitating the banners of fear using slogans such as “Castro-Chavism” and urging the messianic restoration of former president Álvaro Úribe in order to guarantee the “legitimate defence” of the property of the landlords and the other beneficiaries of the violent displacement of millions of farmers and thousands of rural communities throughout Colombia.

Why don´t the progressive sectors of the Colombian oligarchy, or the sectors that present themselves as such, initiate the necessary fundamental democratic reforms corresponding to their role and status? The refusal to recognize the ongoing existence of para-militarism is equivalent to closing their eyes to an evident reality, a reality that was proven by the illegal intercepts carried out against their own communications by elements within the military/ intelligence apparatus during the election campaign of 2014. At the same time as they are lying to the country the progressive elements of the oligarchy are lying to themselves and facilitating the destruction of what remains of the oligarchic State by the elements committed to the preservation of the para-State.

The continued existence and strength of para-militarism pre-empts any possibility that the leftist political parties and social movements will be able to freely and fully exercise their political and civil rights, and it is for this reason that para-militarism must be eradicated as a pre-requisite for the construction of stable and enduring conditions of peace in Colombia.

Source
“La vigencia del paramilitarismo, las fisuras en el bloque de poder y la paz”, by José Honorio Martínez, Prensa Rural, Tuesday, 5 April 2016