A stick with no carrot: supporting revolutionary alliances

Needless to say, a wary populace, already distrustful of a government that has repeatedly abandoned it, is now more skeptical than ever about the rhetoric emanating from Bogotá and Washington. As Mario Cabal of PLANTE succinctly stated, “We have money for helicopters and arms for war, but we don’t have money for social programs.” (Gibbs and Leech, 2005: 70–1; see also Bloomberg, 2006)

A STICK WITH NO CARROT: SUPPORTING REVOLUTIONARY ALLIANCES

It has been well referenced that Colombia’s negative socioeconomic conditions, with limited prospects of structural change, have led to an increased ideological, political, and social growth in radical political activity (Brittain, 2007b; Holmes, Amin Gutiérrez de Piñeres, and Curtin, 2006: 178; Peceny and Durnan, 2006: 98; Felbab-Brown, 2005: 14, 107; O’Shaughnessy and Branford, 2005: 7; Klare, 2001). Rather than reducing social discontent, the realities of neoliberalism and conventional models of development have continued the marginalization of the poor in rural and urban Colombia, facilitating a sociopolitical equation that potentially increases alliances with, or reliance on, the FARC-EP (Leech, 2006b). For example, the methods employed by Washington and Bogotá to eliminate coca applied military strategies to what is clearly a socioeconomic and political problem (Peceny and Durnan, 2006: 109). As was noted in preceding chapters, many cases of increased support toward the FARC-EP have been the result of state violence or its sociopolitical and economic absence (Grandin, 2006: 218; Holmes et al, 2006: 178; Peceny and Durnan, 2006: 98; O’Shaughnessy and Branford, 2005: 7, 34; Calvert, 1999: 128). Disproving assumptions that the insurgency’s support and power are linked primarily to the coca industry, coca eradication programs have repeatedly failed to decrease its political-military capacity or hamper localized support for the guerrillas’ objectives. In August 2006, a FARC-EP comandante said, “the fumigations hurt the peasants more than the guerrillas. They are the ones who are most dependent on coca for their survival” (Leech, 2006b). He went on to state that such “tactics are only further entrenching popular support for the guerrillas in remote regions of the country.” Reactionary policies have, in actuality, allowed the FARC-EP to remain “organically linked to the local peasant population – a fact that the same governments choose to ignore” out of either ideological and political support or socioeconomic sustainability (Leech, 2006b).21 In turn, the guerrilla organization is seen as a proto-government and the army “of the people” (see Petras, 2008; Leech, 2006b).22 Felbab-Brown (2005: 107) claimed that pursuing a system of eradication without the defeat of the FARC-EP or the implementation of sustainable alternative development projects “does the opposite of winning the hearts and minds of the people.” Restrictions in social aid and an expansion of FTAs simply escalate the social base, recruitment numbers, and counter-hegemonic legitimacy of the movement (Brittain and Sacouman, 2006b; Leech, 2006b). Such a vacuum only solidifies the FARC-EP pre-revolutionary programs,