February 16, 2009
Uribe Para Rato
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor
By OSCAR GUARDIOLA-RIVERA
'We’re at war here’, said Luis, as we sat to share a coffee in one of Colombia’s most prestigious Law Schools. ‘Any talk of peace plays into the hands of the terrorists’, he developed. ‘It’s a lie and a distraction. You know they had their chance during the previous administration, and they wasted it. They don’t want peace. They want time to regroup and organize. Democratic security hit them hard. Now they say peace and human rights. Whoever listens to them now is naïve, or a collaborator’.
Luis’s message is clear and shared by many, perhaps the majority of Colombians: you don’t talk to terrorists; you hit them harder and keep hitting them until you knock them down. Peace talk, humanitarian agreements and so on are a dangerous distraction. It gives them time to breath. It follows that if you insist on talking about peace, if you are prepared to give the enemy a voice, any chance to prove that they are anything other than inhuman, no matter how good your intentions may be the fact is you take their side. This was the logic rehearsed by Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez on Friday February 6th, when he publicly accused the tiny minority of Colombians who dare to disagree, of being ‘the intellectual bloc of the FARC guerrillas’. Without mentioning names, he said these intellectuals deliberately pretend that ‘democratic security’ achieves nothing. ‘These people keep talking about human rights all the time, just to frighten our soldiers and policemen’, he said. ‘The intellectual bloc of the FARC guerrillas goes to Europe and the United States and says: “Be careful! Uribe is Paramilitary. Do not approve his Free Trade Agreement. Uribe is Parmilitary and a human rights violator!”. But the intellectual bloc of the FARC guerrillas hit their heads against a wall of facts, because this is the government that has given back to Colombians their trust and confidence’, he added.
Clearly, not to all Colombians. A minority they may be, but a relentless one … and quite influential. It was thanks to them that earlier last week FARC decided unilaterally to free six people, among them policemen and politicians who had been in their power long before Mr Uribe became the sole purveyor of solid facts, unwavering confidence, and all other things sacred to his adoring Colombian fans. These policemen and representatives, systematically forgotten by administration after administration, including the present one, or remembered and abused every now and then for electoral purposes or during public acts of chest-beating, mass rallies that amount to no more than a huge collective act-out, were freed thanks to the decision of this minority of Colombians to reclaim their voice and use it. All they did was to address publicly and directly the FARC guerrillas through a series of letters, challenging the government’s pretend monopoly over the means to manage the conflict.
Make no mistake, these are no FARC sympathizers. Their letters contained the harshest criticism of FARC’s kidnapping practices and an absolute refusal to accept the idea that the cause of the people could be advanced through such means, or that they could be justified in any way by a self-appointed vanguard of the people. They speak of peace, but they are no naïve pacifists either. Their call for peace is militant, and their act makes explicit an absolute refusal to accept the government’s position that it is the sole holder of the means to deal with the conflict. In that sense, they reclaim force as their own.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/rivera02162009.html
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