2.4 The FARC-EP’s interlinking support and solidarity structure

Broken line indicates possible but not formal

Bolivarian Movement for a New Colombia (MBNC)

Clandestine Colombian Communist Party (PCCC)

FARC-EP Secretariat and combatant forces Urban militias

Militias Popular militias

Figure 2.4 The FARC-EP’s interlinking support and solidarity structure

Source: information obtained through observational research in 2004.

and seven members of the FARC-EP, it was clear to me that a reciprocal dialog exists between rural civilians and the guerrilla. Certain issues were mutually agreed upon and others aggressively debated. One comandante of the FARC-EP claimed that such differences of opinion were the only way in which the guerrillas and community members could work together to create better community-based policy. While I never experienced a heated argument between any FARC-EP member and local civilians, it was more than evident that differences arose when some locals expressed their desire for the guerrillas to increase the number of educational classes (in literacy, writing, and so on) offered to the public. Roughly six persons in the audience claimed there was a desire and need for classes to be held every morning. In response, the guerrillas tried to explain that they could not hold daily daytime lessons for security reasons. Interested civilians would have to either attend evening classes (held

twice a week) or continue to attend the weekly morning class already offered. After the forum ended it was unmistakable that a range of views existed over the availability of and access to education, yet it was clear that there was little fear of reprisal for expressing different opinions. A few years after observing the meeting, I was able to meet with a handful of those in attendance that day. They informed me that while it is difficult, their periodical educational classes continue, as does their support for the guerrillas. As one put it, “We can support the FARC-EP but still debate with them.” A guerrilla force that chooses to hold onto power through terror cannot sustain itself over time.24 If coercion is the only medium through which a body maintains power, then it will not be long until the base of its power – the local population – withdraws its “solidarity” (see Johnson, 1966: 162–3). The FARC-EP, as the longest-running and most powerful guerrilla movement in Latin American history, illustrates how community support has helped to enabled its continuity (see Brittain, 2005c: 36; Petras and Morley, 2003: 101–2; Petras and Veltmeyer, 2001: 90; Petras and Brescia, 2000: 135, 142). To succeed the FARC-EP must further consolidate the civilian population along revolutionary class lines (see Bottomore, 1973: 31). As alliances continue, interpersonal/community connections between the guerrillas and local society have the potential to create a micro-level testing ground for radical social change (see Johnson, 1966: 162). I have made a case that support for the FARC-EP exists in Colombia. However, it should also be noted that there is significant protest against it. In February 2008, hundreds of thousands marched throughout Colombia’s cities (and around the world) in apparent opposition to the guerrillas and their continued armed struggle. We now need to contextualize this massive event.

Popular protest: February 4 and March 6, 2008 It could never be claimed that the FARC-EP is a universally supported or even universally accepted social movement. February 4, 2008 made this evident, as people flooded Colombia’s streets to protest against the guerrillas.25 While opposition to the insurgency has been present for decades, early 2008 was significant as the protest took on a popular form. It is important to examine the social construction of this parade of disapproval. The internet has been heralded as an egalitarian medium through which true democratic voices can be expressed and recognized. Facebook is an effective example of this perspective. It could be argued that the social networking outlet is a progressive communication device which provides the public with a centralized digital location through which there can be interaction and organization using non-hierarchical and non-exclusionary methods. Using Facebook a small group of young media-savvy Colombians generated “a website to organize hundreds of thousands for a one-day, worldwide protest against the kidnappings of Colombians and foreigners by that country’s leftist rebels. The effect was a public cry against an imposition of fear” (Christian Science Monitor, 2008).26 If we look closer, however, is it true that this was a spontaneous

and egalitarian protest? Did February 4 demonstrate widespread dissent from FARC-EP’s aims and methods? Roughly 96 percent of Colombia’s population has no direct access to the internet (Telecom Paper, 2008). With less than 5 percent regularly accessing the Web, notions of democratic expression via the internet are highly exaggerated. Even taking into consideration the country’s many internet cafés, only one in four Colombians can gain access, because of issues of cost, time, and surveillance (see Janicke, 2008b). In addition to this, there is no guarantee of reliable electricity supplies on a daily basis in various cities, let alone mediumsized towns (Coghlan, 2004: 205–6). This momentous digital divide should make us question whether the February 4 protest was truly democratically representative. Deconstructing the protest, Kiraz Janicke (2008a) considered the socioeconomic and political realities surrounding it, and how many of the organizers were wealthy young internet users. Much of the event was controlled and promoted by sectors of the Colombian state, with extensive support from the country’s primary business owners (see Janicke, 2008a; Vieira, 2008a). As Bill Weinberg put it,

the campaign clearly had official sanction. Throughout the country, schools cancelled classes for the day or let students out early. In a public square in the northeastern city of Valledupar, President Álvaro Uribe voiced his support for the mobilization. Many marchers openly supported Uribe.

(Weinberg, 2008a)

Most disturbing (and telling of the actual political intentions of the protest) was the fact that some of those leading the anti-FARC-EP parades were “leaders of right-wing paramilitary death squads” (Janicke, 2008b). This made it quite easy for left-of-center politicians to claim that February 4 was nothing more than a “pre-fascist” expression of Colombia’s political division (see Archila, 2007).27 Investigating the dominant classes’ role in the event, Deirdre Griswold (2008) saw the demonstration as “widely publicized in advance by all the major pro-government media,” while “the Colombian stock exchange closed down for it, bosses pressured their workers to attend, and the government shut down schools and public services for the rally.” The protest also went beyond a denunciation of the FARC-EP, as it attacked Latin America’s leftward momentum (Janicke, 2008b). Some commentators noted similarities between February 4 and the anti-left protests witnessed in Chile during the administration of Salvador Allende (1970–73), which claimed to be of the people but were in fact structurally orchestrated by reactionaries (Griswold, 2008). It was not long until “the pro-war ‘peace’ demonstrations dominated by Colombia’s wealthy classes revealed deep divisions within Colombian society” (Janicke, 2008b). After the events of February 4, another domestic and international mass march related to Colombia’s civil war took place. In contrast to the wellpublicized February protests, the Colombian-based National Movement of

Victims of State-Sponsored Crimes (Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado, MOVICE) and various social justice-based organizations, promoted March 6 as a day of remembrance, homage, and protest against those tortured, murdered, and disappeared by past and present governments, militaries, and paramilitary-linked factions. For months, human rights groups, sectors of organized labor, and politically conscious civilians worked together to create a domestic and international response to state-based atrocities. Luis Alberto Matta (2008) highlighted that 270 cities, towns, and villages across Colombia connected with each other to organize the event. Outside Colombia, an estimated 140 cities in 23 countries across Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, and Latin America coordinated events outside Colombian embassies and consulates in conjunction with the day of protest (see also Martínez, 2008a). After months of preparation and days of travel, Colombian men and women peacefully demonstrated their distaste for the state’s activities.28 Hundreds of thousands from both the countryside and cities came forward to condemn state coercion (Rueda, 2008). Over 40,000 arrived in Bogotá alone to surround the Casa de Nariño and Plaza de Bolívar in protest (BBC, 2008; Weinberg, 2008b). While the organizers and promoters of February 4 came from a specific social stratum, the urban-based political-economic elite, the March 6, 2008 protest saw Colombians from all socioeconomic brackets, religions, ethnic backgrounds, and racial categories flood the country’s dirt roads and paved streets. Although the demonstration proved to be a peace-filled egalitarian success, the state had tried relentlessly to dissuade participation through both direct coercion and psychological intimidation. A few weeks prior to the march, President Uribe’s top political adviser, José Obdulio Gaviria, proclaimed that the events scheduled for March 6 were nothing more than a rally coordinated by the FARC-EP (Vieira, 2008a). Coinciding with state threats, Colombia’s popular media groups, primarily El Tiempo,29 made a spectacle of FARCEP comandante Raúl Reyes, who had been killed a few days earlier.30 News outlets paraded photographs of Reyes’ bullet-ridden and mutilated corpse on an hourly basis. This was as a tool to intimidate activists, attack sociopolitical direct action, and deter sympathizers from criticizing the state’s political dominance and promotion of far-right economic/military policies. When these tactics proved insufficient, direct methods of intimidation were deployed. In the southwestern department of Nariño, paramilitaries threatened to attack any organization or person associated with March 6 as “military objectives” (Vieira, 2008a).31 Days prior to the demonstration, in the face of threats and intimidation, indigenous communities, Afro-Colombians, and rural-based civilians began their procession to the Plaza de Bolívar in the heart of Bogotá. Helda Martínez (2008a) documented how roughly 700 people of various ethnicities and racial backgrounds – all of whom had been displaced by state and paramilitary forces – from Cauca, Chocó, Cundinamarca, Huila, and Tolima joined together at a bridge linking Flandes, Tolima and Girardot, Cundinamarca. The collective then symbolically dropped thousands of “flowers of all colors” into the

flowing current of the country’s famous Magdalena River, paying homage to those disappeared, tortured, and/or murdered by a select minority that attempts to uphold Colombia’s dominant class. While such an organic wide-ranging national and international statement was made by everyday Colombians from every corner of the country, “the peaceful nationwide demonstration … basically went unreported by the mainstream media, by contrast with the heavy international coverage of the global Feb. 4 march against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas” (Martínez, 2008b).

What about the popular polls? Several times a year Colombians are exposed to national popularity polls that attempt to gauge levels of support for the state. It is assumed that the surveys offer a representation of faith in the government and military, while providing the international community with an apparent picture of stability. The polls are conducted across Colombia, and produce a quantitative measure of endorsement for state policies and programs. During President Uribe’s first term (2002–06), they showed approval to be above the 70th percentile, and it was in the mid-80s and low-90s halfway through his second term (2006–10). Some argued that Uribe had the highest level of support of any president in the Americas (Bajak, 2008a). This is unique (and somewhat perplexing), as a variety of factors plagued this administration and would have been regarded as an inhospitable climate for most other Latin American governments. Aside from the fact that it is one of the most unequal countries in the hemisphere, roughly 10 percent of Colombia’s population have been forced to leave their communities as a result of threats from paramilitary and state forces (Consultoría para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento, 2007). Another factor is Colombia’s “parapolitica scandal.” Since 2006, well over 100 governors, mayors, military officials, and Congressional politicians have been alleged to have, or were found guilty of having, direct connections, meetings, and/or contracts with paramilitary contingents. During these collaborations thousands of political opponents, trade unionists, and community organizers became the targets of threats and assassinations, and/or they “disappeared.”32 Included in this list are Colombia’s vice-president, Francisco Santos Calderón, his cousin, former defense minister Juan Manuel Santos, President Uribe’s brother Santiago, and their cousin, former senator Mario Uribe, the brother of interior and justice minister Fabio Valencia Cossio, three brothers and the stepson of Colombia’s attorney general, Eduardo Maya Villazón, Senator Carlos García Orjuela, the president of Uribe’s Social National Unity Party (Partido Social de Unidad Nacional, Partido de la ‘U’) – the list goes on (Guillen, 2008; Wingerter, 2008; Forero, 2007b; Romero, 2007). It has been alleged that secret paramilitary meetings also took place at the President’s personal Guacharacas finca (Forero, 2007a; Semana, 2007).33 According to Salvatore Mancuso, the AUC’s principal leader, the actual number of sitting politicians linked to the paramilitary rests around 100 (see Thompson, 2008). When we consider such problematic internal conditions, coupled with an apparent rise in support

for the electoral left in the majority of Latin America (including Colombia34) during the 2000s, it is surprising that a right-wing government should enjoy such popular support. This paradox calls for a deeper examination of Uribe’s popularity. In March 2008 a Gallup poll found that virtually all Colombians were in support of the Uribe administration (Angus Reid Global Monitor, 2008a). Colombia’s most read daily claimed that the president experienced unprecedented support, with record approval ratings (El Tiempo, 2008). The poll was extensive, with 1,000 Colombians in different parts of the country being interviewed (Murphy, 2008). It is seldom understood, however, that the vast majority of these polls are carried out using telephone interviews via landlines (Bajak, 2008a). This is highly problematic for several reasons. First, many Colombians do not use landlines: they are too poor, they do not have access for geographical reasons, or they have personal or political reasons for avoiding them. While mobile phones are widely used throughout much of the country, many areas lack basic infrastructure such as landlines. Some major cities do not yet have the infrastructure to guarantee a stable electricity supply, let alone fixed-line optical networks (see Coghlan, 2004: 205–6). Second, those who are interviewed can easily be traced through their landlines, so the polls are not truly anonymous. This is important to highlight, for it is the state that encourages and partially funds these polls. Third, although polls such as the one quoted claim to be of a representative sample of Colombians, in fact the interviewees are drawn almost entirely from specific zones in the four largest cities. Alfredo Molano argued that these circumstances create a flagrant example of how the state enables small segments of elite society to express their class-biased political approval (see Feder, 2004). Such polls manipulate information from a handful of dominant urban centers, while the state’s most vociferous opponents in the countryside are silenced (Reuters, 2004). As one media outlet brazenly put it, “Colombian pollsters rarely survey the whole country because they consider responses in war-afflicted rural areas unreliable” (Associated Press, 2008c). Fourth, the timing of the March poll was noteworthy. The Gallup interviews took place between March 4 and 6, which directly followed the death of one of the FARCEP’s most prominent leaders – a major victory in the eyes of the elite (see Mercopress, 2008). This was also just hours before one of the largest anti-state rallies in Colombia’s recent history. When a wider sample were polled over Uribe’s popularity weeks later, there was a decline in his approval rating. In May 2008, another 1,000 citizens were polled, but this time in 17 cities. The proportion of respondents in support of Uribe dropped by almost 20 percent (Angus Reid Global Monitor, 2008b). This resembled my own research: I found the further I traveled from the handful of affluent urban centers toward the barrios, rural communities, villages, and towns, the more opposition to the state I found. In fact, hostility toward Uribe has been constant, albeit muted (Mondragón, 2007, 2003, 2002).