COLOMBIA: Marulanda's Prophecy

[magbana]

JR: Marulanda's prophecy

Posted by: "Walter Lippmann" [e-mail] walterlx
Thu Jun 5, 2008 3:25 pm (PDT)

(The author of this article met Marulanda during that period when the
Colombian government permitted the FARC a demilitarized zone when
the government and the FARC were conducting peace negotiations.)
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JUVENTUD REBELDE
June 1, 2008
Marulanda’s prophecy

By: Marina Menéndez Quintero
E-mail: [e-mail]
June 1, 2008 - 00:53:39 GMT

http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs1971.html
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann

«A conflict with foreign troops may be started, but nobody knows how it will
end», Manuel Marulanda told me one morning in June 2001, when he kindly
received us in the so-called Red House, on the road that goes through San
Vicente del Caguán, taking advantage of the peaceful atmosphere of this
demilitarized zone Colombian ex-president Andrés Pastrana chose for peace
talks in 1998.

His words reflected the unaffected nature that always distinguished this
FARC leader of rural extraction who died of a heart attack at 80 and is now
extolled by his comrades as a «matchless strategist» and a «brilliant
leader» who took care of his own education up in the mountains of Tolima.
There he emerged at the head of a group of peasants opposed to the voracity
of the government troops at the height of the struggle between liberals and
conservatives, a typical setting of the dispossessed’s endless fight for the
land. Such was the seed planted in the 1960s that grew to become the Armed
Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), which 40 years later co-stars in a
conflict fueled by the millions of dollars’ worth of cash, weapons and
military advisors provided by the U.S.

That’s what Marulanda was talking about that rainy day at noon as we tasted
a «tintico» in the large veranda of the Red House, accompanied by wife
Sandra, in an interview turned visit for which he asked my colleague Luis
Enrique, from Prensa Latina, and me to refrain from taping our conversation.
It’s raining now, anyway –he argued– and the pounding of the water on the
rooftop saffron-colored tiles would make any recording impossible....

Wearing a checked shirt and jodhpurs, around his neck the usual towel that
people from this and other Colombian regions use to mop the sweat from the
face, the FARC leader had also been premonitory: after he died, the fate of
war in Colombia is still shaped by U.S. interference and the setback it
represents to the humanitarian exchange proposed since then by the rebels as
well as to any negotiated settlement.

An even greater danger is that as a result of the Empire’s pressure, the
conflict will be manipulated and used to create regional dissension and as a
spearhead against similar processes in nearby countries in order to deal a
severe blow to Latin American integration, never before as obvious.

The current unifying steps were yet to be fully foreseeable at the time of
our meeting. And Colombians were more hopeful about a peace agreement then.
A few days before, the few reporters who one way or another had managed to
arrive in San Vicente del Caguán aboard a light aircraft run by Satena –the
sole airline covering this route– and from there travel through stony roads
to the dusty town of La Macarena– had witnessed the unconditional release by
the FARC of more than 300 prisoners of war, all of them policemen and
soldiers, whom the rebels decided to set free as a goodwill gesture for an
exchange.

It was the guerrilla’s opening service to put the ball in the government’s
court in expectation of the release of their comrades from the state prisons
where they had been kept without trial. There were around 300 then, but
today the figure is said to be 500, including commanders Sonia and Simón
Trinidad, extradited to the U.S. on charges ranging from drug trafficking to
terrorism.

Yet, much as the operation involved moving many convicts to La Macarena, it
was less risky than the unconditional release of a second group of prisoners
last January, among them deputies Clara Rojas and Consuelo González, as they
had to evade the army’s air raids all along the way until the meeting point.
Another four ex-members of Congress were also released at a later date.

What came next, however, makes any kind of deal look increasingly distant.
Following the meeting at La Macarena –likely to be «comrade Marulanda»’s
last public appearance– both sides took a tougher line against each other.

With no positive answer from Pastrana and with a view to pushing for the
exchange, the guerrillas took to kidnapping «exchangeable» important
figures, and eventually more than 40 of them fell into their hands. The
government, for its part, chose not to extend the negotiation period beyond
the January 20, 2002 deadline, and stopped the dialogue a short time
afterwards. The elections, and therefore the end of Pastrana’s mandate, were
within sight, but the peace talks had come to a standstill and almost no
progress had been made regarding the 12 items on the rebels’ agenda for
economic and social reform in Colombia.

Months earlier, the presence in San Vicente del Caguán of three members of
Ireland’s Sinn Fein, who had been introduced as IRA activists hired to train
the FARC in the use of explosives, had paved the way for what was coming. At
the same time, Colin Powell, then head of the State Department, was visiting
Bogotá and White House spokesman Richard Boucher said he was «disappointed»
with the way the rebels had «misused the areas under their control».

The events of September 11, 2001 had already happened when the FARC
kidnapped their first «exchangeable» character –Senator Jorge Eduardo
Gechem, recently released– which the U.S. called the last straw and a reason
to label them a ‘terrorist group’.

Seven years later, such definition remains Washington’s hobbyhorse and a
favorite excuse for plots against Latin American unity. Many believe the
U.S. masterminded the Colombian operation, an action in which the FARC’s
main negotiator, Raúl Reyes, was killed together with about twenty of his
men and some young Mexican students who were visiting his camp.

To the rebels, Marulanda’s unavoidable death comes on top of their loss of
Reyes, a man whose negotiating skills earned him the status of the FARC’s
diplomat and who had the proper contacts for a possible resumption of the
peace talks.

In a communiqué where they acknowledge their leader’s passing, the FARC
assures they still favor an exchange of prisoners and a peace settlement,
albeit their fighting spirit has not budged an inch.

But Washington’s earnest efforts remind pessimists of Marulanda’s prediction
that day at noon in the shade of the Red House’s front porch: «Nobody knows
how a conflict with foreign troops will end...»