Colombia had suffered years of civil war with Liberals (Democrats) killing Conservatives (Republicans) and vice versa with a vengeance. Colombia had the highest murder rate in the world for 12 straight years, so a dictator was "the lesser evil" by that time.

Drug Beat
George Luis Dewey
July 2003

How did Colombia turn into this mess?!

What actually happened in Colombia to create the meltdown that we are witnessing today?

Actually, although the average American doesn't understand it, there are many parallels to the current anti-terrorist policies that are being implemented by the government and the situation of political decay as it evolved in Colombia.

I can best illustrate these events, if you will allow me the opportunity, by telling you how I saw the sad progression of events as an American expatriate living in Colombia for 14 years.

At the age of seven I could wander from my home by the sea to the village down the coast called Cartagena de Indias and into the marketplace, my favorite pastime. I was an inquisitive lad and my favorite of the market ladies was a very large woman who would smoke cigars backwards in her mouth for my amusement. I spent many hours talking with the young and the old fishermen who would weave nets with their one good limb and their teeth. Colombia was a hard place, but there was even a sweet decency and innocence on an apparent level still left to be sensed as something truly Colombia.

Perhaps they were merely the idealistic impressions of youth, because holding it altogether was a dictator called Rojas Pinilla. He was a strong man or 'mano dura' and the only way government could be held together.

Colombia had suffered years of civil war with Liberals (Democrats) killing Conservatives (Republicans) and vice versa with a vengeance. Colombia had the highest murder rate in the world for 12 straight years, so a dictator was "the lesser evil" by that time. The rich and the privileged (or those employed by the government or the business bourgeois) had run right into a structural glass ceiling in the myth and propaganda of the capitalist agenda for Latin America. There simply was no way to grow and expand the economy for the peasantry still stuck in the Agrarian world of Colombia's predominant reality. There was a huge group of people who would never be included in the dream and reality of promised development.

On top of that, the Colombian political scene had worked itself into a real polarization that spelled disaster for the average citizen. Roving bands of Liberals or Conservatives would raid and retaliate riding roughshod through the peasant and Indian villages catching the poor peasantry in the crossfire. One day the Conservatives would raid and steal the peasants chickens and then a week later the Liberals would come in and kill them for "cooperating" with the enemy.

So, the first important point is that this Violencia ( the Violence) had its roots in the historical confrontation between these two archetypes, who struggled to co-exist in their banana republic. That is the short of it - they were and still are predominantly a limited agrarian economy including primarily coffee, cocaine, mining and petroleum. The last two categories, being capital intensive ventures, lent themselves to structural weakness by opening the ownership up to control from US bankers and lenders abroad. The leadership and anyone clever and unpatriotic enough had to keep one foot in each world by keeping a hard hand on their pesos and a greedy hand out for blackmarket dollars. Ultimately, the game of keeping what you had in Colombian society became how many US dollars you could hide from the government for yourself, so you could make the really important moves in your life with something anyone would take - few people wanted pesos.

Thus, the second important point is that this US sponsored corruption existed early on, as did our constant support for an internal administration that paid itself and its cronnies with our foreign aid and kept on ignoring the powder keg of overpopulation, the lack of inclusion in the economy and a structural indigenous and peasant lower class.

I remember the Revolution which toppled the Dictator. The Army came over to the support of the students and professors and stormed into downtown Bogota in a tank convoy and defeated the Police and the Dictators private goon squad. He took off to Spain in his hijacked Plane along with the bulk of the National Treasury. The US did nothing to stop him, it was the fashionable thing to do those days it seemed. Still being an innocent and rather naïve young man I know this, because I rode on one of the tanks until it started drawing machine gun fire near the downtown area. My friend and I were picked up by the soldiers when we ran down to the commotion waving our little desktop American and Colombian flags. Ironically, years later, my college professor revealed to me that at the exact same time he was being held prisoner in the US Embassy at bayonet point by military police. He was stabbed, but otherwise unharmed and eventually released.

I had a good front row seat at the events leading up to this event as well. I was an avid bullfight fan and witnessed the day the students sitting in the Sol section (Sunny side of the ring - cheaper seats) got beaten silly by the secret police in trench coats flailing billy clubs and guns. I took a lesson on what fascism and dictatorship looks like in living color. Our home was ringed with machine gun nests, as we lived a stone's throw from an ex-President who had a family home across the park from us. Daily, I would notice the discrepancies of Colombian society, like having to bribe the police to leave you alone and the Mercedes cars obviously owned by the elite.

Colombia had some good Presidents like Alberto Lleras Camargo, who was highly respected, and I grew to admire Belisario Betancourt and others like him, who were healing forces at that time.

The third important part of the understanding of Colombia's predicament is the fine tuning of what we Americanos call BiPartisan Centrist Fascism, although it didn't come in one package rather it evolved in those three orderly progressions until it came to stop in the muck, where it is today.

 

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They called it the National Front or the "Frente Nacional". Under this new "entente" the two opposing parties crafted the bomb that we see exploding in the current headlines. They created a system of Bi-Partisan power sharing whereby each party would have equal seats in their Congress and only the Presidents vote would be the tie-breaker. The job of President was alternated every 4 years by each party, who would have their chance at being the "majority".

That eventually became a narrow form of centrism as Colombia's limited agricultural economy could not accommodate new-comers. Only the rich and the privileged could manage to maintain their lifestyles and both had to work to exclude the poorest members of society Just as the Democratic Party in America has been rendered unrecognizable from the Republican Party by virtue of its materialized market focus, rather than the mandates of any civic virtue or party values, the lines in Colombia continued to blur. The professionals were wooed by the wealthy elite to cooperate with the authorities, just as now under the current language of the War on Terrorism. A constant degenerative focus on the economy to the exclusion of social welfare was the order of the day.

And then came fascism with its roving bands of paramilitaries ( the goons for the elite, who are old hardliners from the Conservative party), still out there making sure the directives of the wealthy landowners and investors are upheld. The vestiges of Colombia's failed economy, the poor worker, the peasant and the restless Marxist intellectuals and professionals wanted something new and better.

I witnessed the beginning of this period as well, when the new demon came on the stage in the early seventies. At that time I had returned to Colombia as a young man recently graduated from college intent on growing top quality natural botanicals in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta The new demon was Drugs and I wasn't there to harvest that, although I still landed smack dab in the middle of the beginning of American drug-terrorism in the form of Operation Intercept. Nixon was president then.

My friends from Bogota, several doctors and lawyers from good Colombian families, were very disenchanted with the new Colombian centrism they could see consolidating, so they dropped out of organized traditional society like so many of their North American counterparts. We struck out to go and homestead the Sierra Nevada on the north coast of Colombia and live near the peaceful and spiritual Arhuaco Indians (or Kogis as they are called by some).

Of course, there was the mafia to contend with and roving bands of Guajiro Indians in loincloths with Uzzis hanging around their necks. They were the dangerous mules for the Mafia smugglers. Our CIA spies were making the coastline a really paranoid and dangerous place. We made it out of there when it became too crazy - we narrowly escaped several very dangerous situations where you just didn't know who to trust anymore. Colombia, for me, became untenable at that point.

My friends stayed to protect their homesteads, only to be caught in the crossfire and forced to fend off marauders of every stripe. I'm sure I know people on both sides of the conflict. In Colombia you generally shoot at people trying to shoot you and often you really don't know or care what their politics are. Often just approaching some person's car is enough to get you in their gun sights until you clear the scene. If you are a fifteen year old kid carrying home a gallon of gasoline or kerosene for your father's generator, the lamps or family stove, that is enough to get you shot by the paramilitaries or the Army, who may accuse you of using it to wash Coca in order to extract the alkaloid.

The Army goes out and surrounds a town, the Paramilitaries (secretly part of the same Army unit) put on their black duds and go into the town rounding up whoever they choose and killing them. Those who attempt to flee are turned back into the killing circle by the Army. After it is over the Paramilitaries return to their uniformed units and then the Unit goes out "looking for the paramilitaries" who were reported in the area. Systematically the People and their merest representative are murdered so the rich and privileged can keep what they own and get rid of the problem of the poor and those they call "the disposables".

Each time America renews its Aid to Colombia for the War on Terrorism this is the agenda we are paying for as American taxpayers. It is a state sponsored form of American "ethnic cleansing" only these people are being killed for being poor and defenseless from the brigands that roam their lands with impunity. We have hung them around their necks for years with out foreign policy of neglect and abuse. The only reason we are in there at all is to maintain oil delivery to the coastline undisturbed. Neither a Marxist revolution, nor a capitalist vision will ever be an answer for the poorest Colombian. He is, and always has been, caught in a historical crossfire. It is ironic that in a country that does not permit unregistered weapons it is the final solution by the right wing government to arm every peasant whether he wants a weapon or not. With a gun in his hands it is for sure someone will shoot him as a combatant.

Colombians will go to the Peace table when they are forced to by the sheer impracticality of any more war. Then they will have to heal their wounds and this will take more than one lifetime at this late date. Don't be so sure you think you know who you would shoot if you were in Colombia and spend your time trying to warn Americans about what they are bringing on themselves by the example of their bi-partisan Centrist fascism. This is the road we are on and this is the meltdown that awaits us if we stay on this wicked track of unbridled capitalism and bi-partisan politics. America take heed - forewarned is forearmed and the truth ignored will destroy us or the truth confirmed will save us if we act in time.

George Luis Dewey - Liberty Steward Editor