The media’s structural silencing of Colombia’s revolution

2002a: 70–1). Contrary to arguments that the FARC-EP retains collected monies, the guerrilla organization has:

crafted its state-making project by helping in channeling funds to public works. The guerrillas have two main sources of funds: private companies such as multinational corporations, national companies, and public enterprises; and state resources devoted to municipalities. Most of these moneys end up in investments in public projects such as vocational schools, road paving, public health, and environmental protection. The taxation mechanisms of FARC, developed and enhanced in the 1990s, are complex because they involve intermediaries such as neighborhood councils (Juntas Accíon Communal, JAC).

(Richani, 2002a: 80)

As previously noted, the FARC-EP acquires levies which are given to JACs for needed localized development and cultural advancement, not top-down programs as incepted and carried out through NGOs or development agencies. It cannot be said that the insurgency hoards collected revenues, nor does it decide how the funds are to be disbursed to the community. Rather, taxes are gathered by the FARC-EP and passed on to the JAC, where “an elected committee from the locality decides on disbursement and allocation of the taxes collected” (Richani, 2002a: 70). In many cases it is not even the guerrillas who negotiate the tax system, as JACs have taken on a greater role in negotiating agreements with local companies or MNCs (Richani, 2002a: 80–1). This highlights the revolutionary evolution of JACs from mediums of centralized state manipulation to revolutionary organizations aligned with the FARC-EP. Members of the insurgency have even been invited to run for certain positions in community action boards: some have won, some lost (Richani, 2002a: 89). Again, this demonstrates the interrelation that has been formed between the FARC-EP and some JACs, a relationship where the guerrillas are not using their power as a tool to coerce a counter-hegemony, but trying to legitimize power from below. JACs have demonstrated, how, when linked with the guerrillas, rural class consciousness has the potential to transform a society. In short, this provides yet another example of how the FARC-EP is organizing pre-revolutionary models to potentially construct a socialist Colombia. However, why is such information largely hidden from the public? We now address this question by considering the role of censorship through the popular media.

THE MEDIA’S STRUCTURAL SILENCING OF COLOMBIA’S REVOLUTION

Although it is labeled “the most dangerous international terrorist group based in this hemisphere” and a threat to US national security, there is ironically little known about the FARC-EP’s operations, activities, or ideology (see Ashcroft, 2002; Randall, 2001; Taylor, 2001; US Department of State, 2001; White

House, 1986). Outside claims of being involved in state-targeted violence and pseudo-relations with the drug economy, minimal understanding exists of what the insurgency is doing in the jungles and mountains of Colombia. Much of what is related is suspect because of the centralized ownership of Colombia’s media and its reliance on state-based sources (Murillo and Avirama, 2004: 160–9; see also Emersberger, 2008; Haste, 2007). The state and monopolized media outlets have over-reported certain aspects of the FARC-EP revolutionary project and greatly under-reported others, if they are addressed at all. This is not to say that some mediums neglect important information: rather, most reports are structurally skewed, inaccurate, or manufactured.16 Structural state-supported media censorship in Colombia dates back to the 1950s through Decree 3000 (1954), which legalized control over critical media operators (Estep, 1969: 62; Martz, 1962: 198). The past decade, however, witnessed a more specific filtering of what is released to the public, factual or otherwise. In the mid-1990s, social justice advocate Father Javier Giraldo (1996: 22–3) argued that Colombia’s media owners had come to rely exclusively on the government or armed forces for information related to sociopolitical issues, especially surrounding the civil war. As time went on it was argued that journalists increasingly became “hyper dependent on official [state] sources, which ... resulted in an increasingly distorted coverage of the conflict” (Leech, 2005b). Alfredo Molano noted this centralization of information by describing how the military refuses to:

allow journalists to enter the combat zones. This kind of control leaves the public essentially blind, and no one knows what happens in these areas. There is a very tight control over information in Colombia, and it gets tighter every day. Ninety, maybe one hundred percent of the news about the conflict or about public order in general are literally produced by the army. So one never completely knows what is going on.

(quoted in Feder, 2004)

Such practices not only censor the reality within but they subsequently misinform peripheral media outlets which unknowingly reproduce the “findings” (Giraldo, 1996: 23). Repression of public thought and critical media commentaries continued in Colombia, but experienced a significant rise under the Uribe administration (Brittain, 2006e; 2006f; Feder, 2006; 2004; Coghlan, 2004: 13).

That the reality of the country’s conflict is rarely reflected in the mainstream media is largely due to the way journalists operate in Colombia. Foreign reporters mostly cover the country’s civil conflict from the safety of the capital Bogotá, rarely venturing into dangerous rural zones except on press junkets organized by the Colombian military or the US embassy .… The mainstream media often echoes official claims that the FARC has lost its ideological motivation and are simply terrorists – a convenient label that has been added since 9/11 to the equally useful

moniker narco-guerrillas. While it is true that the FARC has utilized strategies such as kidnapping and reckless bombings that have alienated sectors of Colombian society, the rebels still retain widespread support in rural areas that have long been under their control. Most media reports and government statements claim that Uribe’s high approval ratings are evidence that he has widespread public support and that the FARC’s low ratings illustrate the rebel group’s marginalization. But these reports often fail to point out the flawed methodology used in the polls. Virtually every opinion poll taken in Colombia is conducted by telephone with some 500 people in the country’s four largest cities: Bogotá, Medellín, Cali and Barranquilla. Logically, the likely respondents are members of Colombia’s middle and upper classes who support Uribe, despise the guerrillas and constitute about 30 per cent of the population. The results are thus clearly not derived from a random sampling of the Colombian population: most urban shantytown dwellers do not have phones. Indeed, the methodology used tellingly illustrates that the opinions of the rural poor still don’t count for much … the rebels do possess significantly more backing than that acknowledged by the opinion polls, government officials and the mainstream media.

(Leech, 2005b)

In short, the state restricted disparaging reports from being released to the domestic and international public by threat of coercion. More than a simple opponent of a free press, Uribe’s administration openly suppressed any who criticized its power.

Uribe is also pushing for tighter control of the Colombian media by seeking to pass laws which censor reporting on Colombian “counter terrorism measures” and Colombian military activity. One of the “anti-terrorism” bills seeks to hand down sentences of eight to twelve years in prison for anyone who publishes statistics considered “counterproductive to the fight against terrorism”, as well as the possible “suspension” of the media outlet in question. These sanctions will apply to anybody who divulges “reports that could hamper the effective implementation of military and police operations, endanger the lives of public forces personnel or private individuals”, or commits other acts that undermine public order, “while boosting the position or image of the enemy” .… The media censorship laws also mean that the reporting of human rights abuses will be harder. (Stokes, 2005: 108–9)

When referring to the Uribe government, Eberto Díaz Montes and Juan Efrain Mendiza17 (2006) claimed that “the prevailing regime in Colombia violates all the fundamental rights of the citizens, especially when they are left-of-centre.” They argued that the voices of those inside the media (and society) are increasingly allowed to only transmit ideas parallel to those of the elite. If they publish another perception they are immediately exposed to persecution. Within this

context, Garry Leech (2005b) suggested the dominant classes’ hegemonic presence has forced journalists to self-censor findings because of fear of political reaction or occupational reprimand.

Broadening the scope to include Washington, it becomes clear that there exists a campaign to filter information related to the civil war and especially the FARC-EP.

An intense disinformation campaign organized by the U.S. government is being propagated by all the corporate media .… The media distort the situation [in] Colombia .… Whenever there is an incident, they immediately blame the rebels. They become the judge and jury with a single mouse click, long before any evidence has been gathered.

(Gutierrez, 2003: 50)

Adding to this scenario, Stan Goff (2003: 81) asserted that the guerrillas are demonized through:

an active, energetic, and highly sophisticated collaboration of the corporate media. Through innuendo, lie, and repetition, they can create an overwhelming impression about the reasons for various U.S. foreign policies. As a result, grotesque distortions like ‘narco-guerrillas’ ... are taken by most people in the United States almost as articles of religious faith.

(Goff, 2003: 81)

In September 2005, Maria Anastasia O’Grady, from the Wall Street Journal, recounted a story of a FARC-EP attack on the small hamlet of Santo Domingo, Arauca in 1998. O’Grady (2005: 17) wrote how the FARC-EP booby-trapped a truck, meant for state forces, but the bomb went off prematurely, resulting in the death of 17 local civilians. In the ironically titled article (“Seeking the truth about a massacre in a Colombian hamlet”), O’Grady published how the FARC-EP forced community members to testify the killings were the result of an air force bombardment. Two weeks after O’Grady’s article was released, Luis Alberto Galvis Mujica, a survivor from Santo Domingo, forwarded a letter condemning O’Grady’s falsified account of what happened on December 13, 1998 and the Wall Street Journal for publishing such disinformation. Galvis Mujica clarified how the attack on his community was undoubtedly (in the fact that he saw it carried out) conducted by state and paramilitary forces, not the FARC-EP (Galvis Mujica and Kovalik, 2005). The article exposed the propaganda disseminated by the centralized media in Colombia and the United States. Some journalists, however, fearlessly continue to work. Their diligence has found various examples of “FARC-EP attacks” that never occurred. To the contrary, they exposed paramilitaries and state forces conducting bombings and blaming them on the FARC-EP (Leech, 2008a; Al-Jazeera, 2006; International Herald Tribune, 2006; Prensa Latina, 2006b; Vieira, 2006c; Pravda, 2005).

An investigation by journalists revealed that the Colombian Army had planted car bombs to accuse FARC of a terror campaign in Bogotá to scare people, build support for the Army and against FARC. It turned out these bombs were not planted by FARC, it was all a frame-up by the Army. One of the bombs actually exploded and killed one civilian and wounded 26 soldiers. The commander of the army went out and said that the bombs had been planted by the Army. The details appeared in the print media, and they involved the purchase of false witnesses and false confessions. The use of money to get witnesses and confessions is part of the perverse politics of rewards for information .… Part of ‘Democratic Security’ is paying people for information and it has led directly to arbitrary detention and false accusation. And inside the army it’s created a career for finding “positives” – “positive” evidence of guerrilla activity that, in many cases, turn out to be “montajes” [to frame]. This craziness for finding “positives” is a product of the president’s own pressure on the armed forces .… So “Montajes” starts with the information from the investigation of the Bogotá bomb plot. But then we showed other montajes in recent history, like the case of Cajamarca. There, a family was killed and the president called it an “accident” of the army. The president effectively made himself the judge to absolve the army. He went on television immediately after the massacre, during prime time, and spoke for half an hour, to explain how it was a mistake made by the army. The truth is that those soldiers had never made a mistake – they planned the killings in detail, including who was going to kill who. It was a young campesino family, including a baby and parents in their twenties. It was a murder, a homicide, an assassination. And when the truth came out, a year later, this news weren’t worth 3 minutes of commercial television on the air. After a year of profusion of lies, we were treated to a fragmented 3 minutes of truth. This is how the media prevents memory. So we showed the elements of the truth of the case of Cajamarca, the case of the recent “montajes”, and we showed how the President justified both. (Morris, 2006)

Rifle de cuadre was another tactic found regularly used. Here state and paramilitary forces would murder civilians and subsequently dress them in guerrilla fatigues, making it appear as though they were defeated in battle (Isacson, 2006a; Vivanco and Sánchez-Moreno, 2006; Aceveda, 2005; BBC, 2005; United Nations, 2005; Glenn, 2003: 71; Holmes, 2003: 91; Scott, 2003: 78; NACLA, 2000: 42). A two-way strategy, it presented an image of state efficiency in fighting the FARC-EP and intimidated insurgent supporters, as they wondered who would be targeted next. Other accounts documented the planting of evidence to make the FARC-EP appear to be involved in illicit activity (Hardy, 2004; Scott, 2003: 92n.19). It has also emerged that paramilitaries and petty criminals have pretended to be guerrillas to gain intelligence on, or loot, rural communities, thus blame is placed on the FARC-EP (Molano, 2005: 134; Taussig, 2004b: 140–1). This offers a seldom-presented critique of how the FARC-EP has been deemed