Who's in Control?
"Ten huge financial groups determined its political future." Some changes in Colombia's foreign policy were expected under the new liberal government of Conservative President Betancur....
...The National Liberation Army (ELN), which drew its inspiration from Cuba, was formed in 1965...
...These included two top officials (Colonel Hernin Dario Velandfa Hurtado and Colonel Emilio Gil Bermfidez-who, at that moment was attending a special course for high-ranking officers in Washington), two majors and three captains...
...According to Lleras, "I was told that the proposals put forth by the Peace Commission and approved by its civilian members would lead to the demoralization of the armed forces...
...Internationally, the movement is best known for its dramatic capture of the Dominican Republic's embassy, replete with 14 ambassadors-including the top U.S...
...8 (July 1982), p. 28...
...and other markets...
...The funds were to provision an army of 2,230 ("each chief will designate ten of his best men") who would then take direct action against the kidnappers-by publicly executing them...
...the supreme commander of M-19, in Colombia...
...4 One of the current insurgent organizations, Choco, on Colombia's Pacific Coast...
...By 1980 coffee earnings again represented nearly two-thirds of Colombia's total export income...
...Coffee continued to be the single most valuable export in the 1970s because, by mid-decade, coffee prices had gone through the roof...
...We have already seen sign posts of this problem scattered over Colombia's history: the urgency with which Colombian leaders felt they had to follow the foreign policy of the United States...
...When taken as a whole, these factors leave Betancur with very little room for independent maneuver...
...Their struggle for nonalignment is a justifiable reaction to eight decades of subservience to U.S...
...Jacobo Arenas, "Documentos," in Diario deMarquetalia (BogotA: Edici6n Colombiana Abej6n Mono, 1972), p. 128...
...More importantly, he seemed to shift to a de facto acceptance of the army's position that all political opposition to Colombia's governing system was criminal...
...Cited in El Espectador (Bogoti), January 25, 1983...
...Information from Latin America Political Report, May 5, 1978 and Ruhl, Armed Forces and Society, p. 40...
...Latin America Political Report, September 23, 1977...
...In 1980, for example, the Colombian Workers Union (UTC), the largest trade union confederation and tied to the Conservatives, split...
...Land takeovers were met with violence...
...FARC generally suspends its armed activities during electoral campaigns when the PCC is running candidates...
...Embassy officials in BogotA, the export of marijuana, cocaine and quaaludes (methaqualone) generated nearly $3 billion a year...
...Further guerrilla organizations sprang up in the 1970s, but only one, the April 19th Move24 NACLA ReportMay/June 1983 On the Putumayo River, in the Amazon jungle...
...4 8 This is in addition to the nearly 50,000 "normal" security arrests that took place between 1974 and 1982.49 According to Amnesty International, which presented a summary of its findings to the Colombian government in 1980, most of the arrests lacked any legal basis...
...In order to achieve peace, one must solve this most serious problem...
...5 2 Labor was also targeted for repression by the government...
...Neither do we believe that a legal movement is the prerequisite of political participation in this country...
...Between 1973 and 1982 this small entrepreneur managed to accumulate 56 enterprises, including the prestigious Banco Nacional in Bogota...
...Milton Friedman should be delighted...
...It also took the opportunity to decorate the highest ranking defendant, Colonel Dario Velandfa...
...Expected: The government reshuffled the cabinet but otherwise refused to treat the workers' demands seriously...
...we would have to be armed, and [I can guarantee you that at least 100 people would be killed...
...Some 40,000 to 70,000 families are said to be directly involved in the trade...
...The government's attacks on organized labor since the 1977 paro civico had weakened, but not destroyed, the labor movement, The long-run effects of the attacks will probably be even more important since the government-directed violence encouraged the largest trade union confederations to re-examine their ties to the Liberals and Conservatives...
...Nine months after his inauguration, Betancur's hold on the reins of power grows more and more tenuous...
...z Nevertheless, the public platforms presented by M-19 stress three points: economic and political democracy domestically and non-alignment internationally...
...See Miami Herald, November 16, 1979 and October 21, 1982...
...Speech in Pasto, Colombia, February 1982...
...4 (July-August 1979), pp...
...Their willingness to discuss a meaningful amnesty with Betancur was an indication that, given the right circumstances, other ways could be constructed...
...NACLA interview withJaime Bateman...
...This basic principle of military power is drummed into the nation's consciousness by civilian and military rulers eager to demonstrate just the opposite...
...And even during the U.S...
...Miami Herald, December 26, 1982...
...It was not difficult for the top brass to argue that Colombia was sinking into a cesspool of violence and corruption...
...The paro civico sparked both expected and unexpected responses...
...4 1 That this violence was attributable to political subversion, however, was considerably harder for the military to prove...
...The impact of the drug economy on Colombia is staggering-and uncontrolled...
...2 " This is consistent with government policy which holds that the evils of the trade are the responsibility of the buyers, not the sellers...
...While the general established a tone that polluted any existing conciliatory atmosphere, other forces moved to make it positively stupid for the guerrillas to lay down their arms...
...Colombia became ever more oriented toward speculation instead of real growth...
...5" Amnesty International's report, together with equally damning studies by the International Commission of Jurists and other human rights organizations, seriously challenged Colombia's image as a civilian-run, constitutional democracy...
...In our opinion, the latter op...
...He has publicly maintained support for his attorney general...
...For its part, the military was encouraged with millions of dollars in U.S...
...25"M-19 burst on the national stage in 1974 by stealing the sword used by Simon Bolivar from the National Museum...
...More often, as in Chile, Argentina or Mexico, the Communist parties have criticized this approach when undertaken by other left organizations...
...0 Carabineros, Bogota...
...The more sinister development is the growth of rightist death squads in the last few years...
...In a countrywide survey conducted by a major bankers' association, more than 66% of those questioned thought that the most effective way of solving the " guerrilla problem" was by combating unemployment and poverty...
...Ten huge financial groups determined Colombia's economic course as well as its political future, since they were also the major backers of both the Liberal and Conservative parties Children picking over garbage for recycling, Bogota...
...WHO'S IN CONTROL...
...Most of the victims have been peasants in rural Colombia accused of supporting the country's guerrilla organizations...
...El Tiempo, October 31, 1982...
...however, that we were losing ground politically We have plenty of arguments to prove that the conditions do not exist for the legalization of armed movements...
...In this way the subversive groups' will to fight [was revived] and the military defeats they received were turned into resounding political victories.'"" The official party platform of the Conservatives--from which Betancur distanced himself--likewise argued that the guerrillas were "a problem of foreign origin which demanded a military solution...
...Agrarian Program of the Guerrillas," in Diario de Marquetalia...
...It is also clear that as long as we don't change the way the guerrillas themselves think and act, we will wait for 40 more years, and still nothing will happen...
...6. Ernesto Parra Escobar, La economia colombiana, 19711981 (Bogotg: Cinep, 1982), p. 41...
...Excdlsior (Mexico City), July 24, 1977...
...We do not believe mass mobilizations are necessary for there to be a revolution in Colombia...
...In the lirst place...
...To Turbay, the armed movement seemed like the mythical Hydra: chop the head off one organization-which the army became quite adept at doing-and two more would replace it...
...and Hector Melo, "jQuidn controla los medios de comunicaci6n en Colombia...
...XIII, no...
...Like a house of cards, when one was removed-coffee prices turned sharply lower in 1981--the whole structure tumbled down...
...The problem, however, is that Belancur stayed at that point...
...Three issues illustrate Betancur's frustration: 1) a new economy, totally outside of official state control and led by a new bourgeoisie, has arisen in the last decade, eclipsing the formerly unchallenged power of the coffee exporters...
...Even though the military has rarely actually occupied the presidential palace in Colombia, long years of U.S...
...NACLA interview withJulio Cdsar Turbay, Bogoti, October 4, 1982...
...The interesting aspect of FARC is that its origins were in the "independent republics," self-defense zones established during the Violencia where armed peasants were capable of excluding the state's military forces...
...There have yet to be any negotiations between guerrillas and the government: Betancur has refused...
...In a March 14 address to the nation, the president promised (read hoped) that, "There will be no coup d'etat...
...Fernando Urrea Girealdo, "Caracterfsticas de la economfa colombiana en la decada de los setentas" (unpublished ms., 1982...
...Concurrently, 62 highranking retired officers blasted the government and claimed that the armed forces were the only ones capable of containing the "chaos, moral crisis and corruption" rampant in Colombia...
...7 Secondly, it is producing serious distortions in the patterns of income generation in the country...
...El Tiempo (BogotA), February 1, 1983...
...6 8 In a recentlymonitored radio broadcast, FARC indicated that it recognized the importance of urbanbased work and the need to attack centers of production.69 FARC supports the notion of a "prolonged people's war...
...By themselves, the numbers looked impressive...
...By the end of the decade, drug exports had surpassed even the coffee trade...
...Enforcers and Death Squads The generalized level of social turmoil that has swept Colombia since the Violencia period, together with the growth of the drug trade and the military's hard-line equating of opposition to banditry has contributed to the growth of a massive network of private "enforcers," running the gamut from individual bodyguards for corporate officials to well-financed death squads...
...Finally, the government accused the guerrillas of going back on their word when they refused to give up their arms...
...For example], if M-19were to take part in a demonstration [today...
...In Colombia," he stressed, "if you don't govern with the military, you won't be able to govern at all for very long...
...and multilateral agency loans and grants has encouraged this shift, helping to build the roads, airports, communications facilities and electrical generation networks necessary for industrialization...
...What changes they do effect, as we will see, are largely negative...
...Rather than dispersing its forces over the length and breadth of the country, it would concentrate in one area to better confront the primary structure of the state, the army...
...Besides banning the publication of "non-official" information on strikes, demonstrations and other threats to the public order, the new law transferred many categories of offense from civilian to military courts...
...To put this astronomical sum in perspective, a single year's sales would nearly wipe out the entire Brazilian foreign debt...
...6 In reality, only two guerrilla organizations are currently capable of generating serious opposition to the government: FARC and M-19...
...This new sourc welcome as the econ mid-1970s...
...The opposition still has no real guarantees, people are still being gunned down...
...Under its provisions traffickers would be able to invest their drug profits directly into legitimate ventures without fearing any embarrassing questions from the government...
...The speculative cycle had its limits...
...Financial Times, February 19, 1982...
...And governing with the military required closing the one door that offered some hope for the peaceful broadening of democratic rights in the country...
...Whatever changes they produce on the local economies are by and large outside of state control...
...For another sector of the population, the issue was important not in its specifics-the terms and conditions of amnesty and political dialog-but in a general recognition that the guerrilla movement was a visible sign of the failure of Colombia's political and economic system...
...Even that opinion is generous...
...Some languished in prison, some "disappeared," some were murdered...
...The case of cocaine is somewhat different since more than half of the crop is grown in other countries (primarily Peru and Bolivia) and shipped to Colombia for processing and eventual export to U.S...
...Their program, in short, is both a reflection of the populist heritage of the ANAPO years and of Colombia's own difficult history...
...The CRIC was founded in 1971 among the Paez, Coconuco and Guanaca Indians of impoverished Cauca province...
...Smaller than the other organizations, it concentrated on urban guerrilla activities...
...Represidny tortura, p. 45...
...Its very name comes from April 19, 1970, the day that ANAPO charges it was robbed of a sure victory in the presidential elections...
...Although fewer people are engaged in this industry than in marijuana, the income generated by the coke trade is tremendous...
...He didn't advance to the next stage: dialog...
...2. NACLA interview with Julio Cisar Turbay, BogotA, Colombia, October 4, 1982...
...and the Profitable Colombia has, to some extent, shared the last two years of recession with most of the other countries in Latin America...
...and dominated the major media outlets in the country...
...As Turbay had warned, either he governed with the military or he wouldn't be able to govern at all...
...Turbay proposed two amnesty plans during his tenure...
...Backwater towns along the "coca belt" of these countries, lacking paved roads or electricity for more than a 40-watt bulb in the town square, suddently boast more Mercedes, BMWs and Alfa Romeos than inhabitants...
...L6pez Michelsen, "La marijuana...," p. 50...
...The House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control labeled Colombia "the single most important staging point for cocaine destined to the United States...
...policy objectives...
...Private business organizations have argued that the marijuana trade should be legalized-and taxed...
...See also, "Colombia: Turbay and M-19 View Betancur," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...When they resumed, the general had lost by 66,000 votes out of 4 million cast...
...Alfonso L6pez Michelsen, "La marijuana y otras yerbas," Opiniones, July 13, 1979...
...JB: The peace initiatives which Betancur is of ering [to the guerrillas]) are the same that we have proposed for a long time...
...8 (July 1982...
...and 3) armed insurgent movements continue to operate and have an impact on the country's political life which probably far outweighs their actual challenge to state power...
...See Josue W. Hoyt, "Colombia: Paez Indians Persecuted," NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...Their fight for democracy is more than rhetorical...
...In a similar way, their adoption of armed struggle was based on the belief that all nonviolent roads to change had been closed in Colombia...
...Whether this was Betancur's original intention or whether the realities of military power forced him to accept it is not known, and ultimately is not important...
...1 (January-February 1983), pp...
...Finally, in October 1982, Betancur extended a special credit of $120 million to the banks and began an investigation into the causes of their failure...
...The Paro Civico Nacional (National Civic Strike) of 1977 was the first to receive the support of all four major labor confederations (correspondingly allied to Liberals, Conservatives, Communists and independent leftists...
...Interview on CARACOL (Colombian National Broadcasting System), September 1982...
...Instead, the new security laws have 20"It appears that the military and security forces themselves were actively cooperating with the most notorious terrorists in Colombia...
...But we do believe that mass mobilizations are necessary to push the struggle for economic demands as long as these mobilizations lorm part of a larger strategic program...
...As if it were an announcement of a job opening rather than an invitation to murder, the leaflet urged the residents of Cali to collaborate "by posting this in your office, business or factory...
...According to U.S...
...and we formed an open political front [called the Comando Politico] to demonstrate the conflict between Betancur's theories and reality Experience showed...
...2 0 A former Colombian president thought that $600 million was closer to the mark...
...The commission conceived of its task in broader terms-the creation of political and economic measures to serve as a guarantee against future rebellions-but it foundered on a different rock...
...After sending his own family out of the country for safety's sake, he released the names of some 60 officers and soldiers accused of taking part in MAS's activities...
...Le Monde, January 23, 1978...
...The majority favored the formation of a labor party independent of the governing parties...
...Ten years after Colombia danced center stage in the Alliance's spotlight, the country's social structure remained, according to a U.S...
...In the first place, marijuana, as with any well-paid cash crop, is attracting producers away from other crops...
...According to the DEA, Correa Maya had a "trafficking association" with major cocaine dealers...
...13NACLA RAepot ing long stretches of the Violencia...
...legislative changes...
...Among the former, according to the former defense minister, General Camacho Leyva, is an army of 200,000 private guards who protect the lives and enterprises of Colombia's wealthy...
...By the mid-1970s, Colombia exported chemicals, pharmaceuticals, metal-mechanical products, machinery and electrical equipment.' It has also diversified its agricultural exports, sending flowers, sugar and bananas abroad along with its coffee...
...At center, President Lleras Camargo of Colombia smiles at President Velazco Ibarra of Ecuador President Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela stands left of Lleras Camargo...
...Lernoux, "Corrupting Colombia," p. 15...
...Interview with M-19 published in ALAI, December 14, 1979...
...Since the government will ex16 NACLA ReortMay/June 1983 change most dollars ceeds from drug sale economy...
...What remains painfully obvious is that the largest part of the Colombian economy has regressed toward a perfect laissez-faire state: it is neither taxed, controlled nor otherwise regulated by the government...
...The Economy: The Good . . . From a rural, agricultural base in the 1950s, Colombia increasingly evolved into a more urban, industrialized country...
...The DAS chief in Atlintico was jailed on drug charges in 1976...
...Thousands of fighters accepted his amnesty...
...Arms and Disarmament Agency, 1982), p. 54...
...This process was carried to a grotesque extreme in Bolivia where a "cocaine coup" in 1980 brought General Luis Garcia Meza and his interior minister, Colonel Luis Arce G6mez, to power...
...Recognizing that talk is cheap, Betancur also 18 NACLANt"In Colombia, if you don't govern with the military, you won't be able to govern at all for very long...
...The organization calls for an effective agrarian reform, destruction of the latifundia and termination of oppressive sharecropping systems...
...2, no...
...Growth of a Guerrilla Movement Even the Reagan administration would have a hard time laying responsibility for the origins of Colombia's guerrilla movement at Cuba's doorstep...
...During the next few months, the men in khaki succeeded in pressuring the government for increased facilities...
...They advised the citizenry that 223 "Mafia chiefs" had just ended an extraordinary assembly in which they agreed to contribute 146 million pesos (more than $2 million) to a campaign to combat "kidnapping" (which was understood to mean subversion of any stripe...
...Right now we have to strengthen our military capacities, concentrate our forces, attack the army on a daily basis, capture weapons and begin to integrate people into our movement based on their own experiences and not on an abstract policy...
...Consider: In 1978, marijuana exports were valued slightly under or on a par with coffee exports, yet only 40,000 people grew the grass, while nearly 2 million labored in coffee production...
...In its August 1982 platform and in other declarations by M-19 leaders, what becomes evident is their emphasis on two objectives: the winning of democratic rights and a foreign policy based on non-alignment...
...22May/June 1983 MAS and the Military In March 1983 President Betancur promised a new stage in the fight against crime and terrorism...
...FBIS, March 15, 1983...
...Senate report, "essentially unchanged...
...The reports drew attention to the fact that activist Indian organizations and labor leaders had been singled out for particularly harsh treatment...
...The handbills, complete with a sign of the cross, were signed by "MAS, Death to the Kidnappers, the Strike Force of the Mafia...
...Although FARC didn't arise in its present form until 1966, many of FARC's founders were guerrilla fighters during the civil war who never put down their arms...
...JB: At one point we believed it was possible to take advantage of the legal opening [provided by Betancur...
...But, by then, ANAPO was riven with internal contradictions and unable to keep its populist forces intact.71 Based on the lessons of other armed movements, particularly those in Central America, M-19 began to modify its tactical approach in the early 1980s...
...He continues to raise the expectations of the people, but he has not been able to provide any real solutions [to their problems...
...In this sense FARC is unusual since it is a guerrilla army that receives its political direction from a traditional Communist party...
...Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA...
...2 Most recently, Betancur ordered an "amnesty" on illegal drug income...
...Having concentrated on building its export potential over the last decade, Colombia now finds, with the rest of Latin America, that no one is buying what it has to offer...
...So what do they mean when they speak of democratic openings...
...The Alliance for Progress had held out the promise of economic development combined with a more equitable distribution of the rewards of that development...
...However, in Colombia the most important economic change of the past decade was a lucrative one-but it didn't affect the GNP, foreign reserves or current accounts...
...5 . . .The Bad...
...I (January-February 1983), p. 1. 58...
...I believe that in the long run Betancur will play a negative role in terms of the interests of the Salvadorean people...
...The traffic has generated a new, very wealthy and increasingly powerful bourgeoisie...
...Today Caqueti is M-19 territory...
...Previously, the money first had to be laundered before it could be invested...
...High inflation and L6pez Michelsen's austerity programs had undermined the workers' standard of living...
...But the human rights situation in the country has deteriorated markedly...
...Under the country's current conditions," Betancur rationalized in February 1983, "the military and police presence in the territory of Colombia is a factor of state sovereignty and power and should not be taken as something hostile to its citizens...
...In 1981, Turbay took away the legal charter of the 300,000 member, Communist-affiliated Union Confederation of Colombian Workers (CSTC...
...After weeks of talk, three proposals were put before the Colombian Congress, and one was overwhelmingly approved in November 1982...
...Coca paste is refined into cocaine hydrochloride in Bogota, Cali and Medellin, and then exported north through Guajira province...
...4. Proexpo, General Features of Colombia (BogotA: Proexpo, 1981), Table 8a-c...
...Writing in the journal of the armed forces, General Fernando Landazibal, Betancur's defense minister, threatened that: "Those who don't accept the amnesty [by turning themselves in] will be revealed for what they really are: members of criminal groups...
...Aid, February 1, 1969, cited in Speck, "Colombia: Growth," p. 2. 9. Ibid...
...2 4 Correa's empire was built on the expectation that the economy would continue to grow and dollars-both through illicit drug channels and legal coffee sales-would enter his banks, looking for profitable reinvestment...
...And while the amnesty plan which he introduced into Congress is neither broad nor unconditional, it is still the best one which has been offered yet...
...As a leading Colombian banker admitted, "Within an oxygen tent of protection, we raised an inefficient industrial sector so that...
...7 4 He added that the military opposed dropping charges against the guerrillas and that they considered it "offensive to the national honor" for Lleras to meet with Jaime Bateman to discuss the amnesty...
...ment (M-19) has achieved any sizable following and impact...
...Colombia had become a world-class drug supplier, a "traffickers' paradise," according to the head of the U.S...
...The steady generation of guerrilla organizations has frustrated Liberals and Conservatives alike...
...And herein lies the irony of Colombia...
...Floods and frost in Brazil, earthquakes in Bogota 14May/June 1983 Guatemala and revolutionary war in Angola helped triple Colombia's coffee export value in 1975...
...NACLA associate Ramon Jimeno interviewed Jaime Bateman Cayon...
...Latin America Weekly Report, July 9, 1982...
...Connections between MAS and the military had been hard to document until early 1983, when three Colombian peasants spoke to the press...
...Any thought of reaching a meaningful amnesty with the guerrilla forces combating the government has become all but impossible...
...Miami Herald, May 30, 1981...
...Rojas Pinilla was winning the elections when all radio reports of the balloting were cut...
...Father Camilo Torres, one of the earliest examples of a new wave of social and political activism in the Church, joined the ELN in the 1960s, and was killed in combat...
...Where FARC is reticent and guarded in its public dialog, M-19 is positively effusive...
...The move cleared out independents-"thinking generals," as one participant characterized them-from the officer corps...
...By the mid-1970s, however, opposition to the government had spread to the cities...
...Although only recently settled, Caqueti was known as a site of important peasant struggles over land rights...
...The ELN was a strong force until 1973 when the government launched a massive military campaign against their forces in Anorf province...
...In point of fact, very rarely in Latin America has a Soviet-oriented Communist party engaged in armed struggle...
...More than $2 billion in U.S...
...The government was taken to task for "massive indiscriminate politically motivated arrests, prolonged incarceration without trial, torture, the usurpation of civil proceedings by the military, and political assassination...
...As opposed to earlier amnesties, Betancur's plan did not stipulate that those seeking amnesty first had to turn in their weapons, nor did the plan require acceptance by the guerrilla organizations...
...23-25...
...Forty-eight members of the Regional Council of the Cauca (CRIC) have been murdered since 1973...
...7 " Their economic program calls for the protection of national resources, control of monopolies and encouragement of small and mid-sized enterprises and a sweeping agrarian reform...
...According to one source, 15 to 20% of the members of the Colombian Congress are elected with drug funds...
...5 6 Yet it appears that the military and security forces themselves were actively cooperating with the most notorious terrorists in Colombia...
...Yet if one issue dominated last year's electoral contest between L6pez Michelsen and Betancur it was the guerrillas, specifically: Should the government design an amnesty that could bring the fighters back into the institutional life of the country...
...2 It is a tidy sum in either case, considering that the entire publicly announced budget for Colombia's military in 1979 was only $217 million...
...Poisoning the Atmosphere The viability of the November 1982 amnesty -particularly given Colombia's less-thanhonorable record on upholding previous amnesties-greatly depended on the government's ability to create an atmosphere of trust and a record of positive accomplishments in implementing its side of the proposal...
...Cited in William O. Walker III, Drug Control in the Americas (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981), pp...
...See Miami Herald, December 15, 1980, Los Angeles Times, October 31, 1980...
...Although the military has sent up to 17,000 troops to crush the guerrilla movement, they have failed conspicuously...
...But even El Tiempo, the Liberal paper of a Liberal president, observed: "Perhaps the only thing the government could not claim about the general strike was that it had failed...because this quite simply was refuted by what the people had seen in the streets...
...It is known that the military had pulled the rug out from under previous, less-generous amnesty proposals and that the top brass remained committed to an armed victory over the insurgents...
...Although the Colombian Supreme Court has recently voided the measure, Betancur has reintroduced it to a new session of Congress...
...In October 1981, the city of Cali was blanketed with leaflets dropped from small private planes...
...It is not the first time that a Colombian president has expressed frustration over trying to Colombia's economic course as well as govern a state that he does not control...
...4 2 As if to prove his intentions, Turbay suggested that the minority of supreme court justices who opposed the statute-it created a "constitutional dictatorship," one argued-should be disciplined...
...Marijuana shipments from Colombia, estimated to generate nearly $1.4 billion yearly, increased dramatically with the paraquat-spraying of the Mexican crop in the mid-1970s.' 4 Estimates of Colombian crop lands devoted to its cultivation range from 85,000 to 250,000 acres.1 Most previously was grown in Guajira province, in the isolated northeast...
...Or should the "problem" be resolved militarily...
...A copy of the leaflet is in the NACLA files...
...The other organizations, ELN, EPL and ADO, rejected the bill...
...Local industry, already uncompetitive and isolated from the fabulous profits of the new class, retreated, serving the needs of the country's poorer sectors.A Friedmanesque Paradise The size of the drug trade and an increasing current accounts deficit has spurred the present Colombian government to develop some means of capturing part of the illicit trade for its own ends...
...Betancur later became rather insistent...
...To a certain extent this is because they remain totally dedicated to the present and its military struggle...
...7 6 Political prisoners released under the auspices of the amnesty often ended up in the clutches of MAS...
...1. Financial Times (London), September 29, 1982...
...Jaime SAnchez Torres, Colombia Represidn, 19701981 (Bogota: Cinep, 1982), p. 35...
...L6pez Michelsen threatened striking workers with instant dismissal and up to six months imprisonment.:" His bite was as bad as his bark...
...Election day in the countryside...
...All political prisoners would be tried by special courts, anyone charged under the new law would be held without bail until trial, defendants would be offered monetary rewards and, if applicable, the dropping of all charges against them if they agreed to turn state's evidence...
...Finally, the Colombian economy was becoming increasingly concentrated in fewer hands-without any consequent benefit to productivity or efficiency...
...No political movement can walk into such a Situation...
...Secondly, we do not trust the government when it speaks of "democratic openings...
...As Jacobo Arenas, its veteran leader, claims, "We are the core of a revolutionary movement which has developed since 1948.' ' Two other insurgent groups developed in the 1960s...
...However, those guerrillas found carrying weapons after that date faced stiff penalties...
...Journalist Penny Lernoux estimated that some $115 million a year is paid out in bribes to Colombian military and government employees...
...7. Financial Times, February 19, 1982...
...The first of these came in January 1978 when L6pez Michelsen pushed through a law declaring the military and police to be "exempt from any legal responsibility for their actions against violence [sic ] and drug trafficking...
...And later the same year the former head of the whole operation, General Jorge Ord6fiez Valderrama, was sentenced to seven and a half years for embezzlement...
...Nor have they created alternative state structures in Caqueti which can serve as a model...
...Once again the military and police would be given extraordinary facilities for combating "terrorism...
...In 1973, the head of the DAS in Leticia province was arrested while transporting 19 kilos of cocaine...
...lion is the more likely one, but it will be no easy thing to explain this to the masses...because many people, ourselves included, believed it was possible to change the current political system...
...It wasn't long before the banks of the traditional bourgeoisie, such as the Banco de Colombia or the privately-held Banco del Estado, admitted that they were in deep trouble...
...But, given the fact that many were subsequently assassinated over the next decade, the combatants approached future amnesties very cautiously...
...1 (May 12, 1982...
...The manufacturing sector grew by only 1.1% between 1980 and 1981 while the financial sector expanded by 5.5% .23 Banks and financial institutions became coveted vehicles for laundering drug money and investing it in the economy...
...What Betancur may have seen as a reward to the military for "respecting" the constitution more closely represents to independent observers just how constrained is the president in setting forth a new domestic policy...
...Latin America Political Report, September 22 and November 10, 1978...
...To be real, a democratic opening has to be based on concrete measures...
...or something of that nature...
...At the same time] we are preparing to renew our military operations along different lines We are beginning to change the very nature of guerrilla warfare-and this is going to create problems for Betancur...
...it is an indication that for all the elections, Colombians are still alienated from the basic rights of formal democracies...
...El Pais (Madrid), February 21, 1983, cited in Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), March 3, 1983...
...FARC also gave rise to many of the leaders of other guerrilla movements who left the older organizations over tactical or strategic differences...
...in ALAI, Vol...
...This law soon came to be known as a "license to kill," for it allowed the military and police to act with impunity against any opposition...
...Latin America Political Report, May 5, 1978...
...Political democracy would be guaranteed by laws governing the broadening of legal and political rights for all, freedom of expression and the press, and the restoration of a sense of dignity to the armed forces by making it the defender of Colombia's national sovereignty and not an instrument of internal aggression...
...Bateman enumerated more than 30...
...Arrests, Torture, Murder Between January 1979 and August 1981 more than 60,000 people were arrested in what Colombian authorities bragged was the "largest operation undertaken by the military forces to combat subversion in the country...
...Semana, No...
...The Roots of Amnesty No one is predicting that the 4,000 to 6,000 armed guerrillas operating in Colombia have any immediate chance of overthrowing the government...
...The immediate result of the amnesty was quite positive for the guerrillas...
...Part of the Problem...
...Mav/June 1983 19NACLA Report They published a study concluding that Colombians would have to work 200 hours a week at the minimum wage in order to cover their basic living expenses.: 7 Expected and Unexpected: The military predictably saw the strike as a basic threat to "national security...
...5 7 Then, in February 1983, Colombia's attorney general created a new furor...
...38-41...
...Relatives of both Turbay and Betancur have been linked to drug trafficking.'" Whether or not top government members are involved in the trade, there is no doubt that a huge number of Colombian officials can line their pockets by simply looking the other way...
...5. Financial Times, February 19, 1982...
...3. Mary Speck, "Colombia: Growth Without Equity," International Policy Report (February 1981), pp...
...it is an indication that for all the elections, Colom26 NACLA ReportMay/June 1983 27 M-19's Leader Speaks With NACI In March 1983...
...what we import is cheaper than what we produce and, on no few occasions, of better quality...
...allowed the military and civilian hard-liners to step up their campaign against all forms of political opposition in Colombia...
...Of the assassinations, 38 were attributable to battles be28"Their fight for democracy is more than rhetorical...
...That year, the alliance contested the elections as a dissident faction of both Liberal and Conservative parties (since running as an independent party was prohibited...
...Cited in Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1977...
...Because could not fill the n eagerly incorporated If it sounded too good to be true, it was, for the inflow of drug dollars significantly twisted the Colombian economy...
...It was automatically applied a few weeks after passage...
...M-19 was more political than military [before then...
...bicentennial, a number of naval officers participating in the "Tall Ships" Flotilla in New York harbor were arrested for smuggling cocaine on Colombia's national entry...
...Miami Herald, October 14, 1981...
...We in the Colombia military do not wear the symbols of our hierarchy in order to surrender, but only to be victorious...
...Cited in Latin America Political Report, September 23, 1977...
...In 1970 Colombia earned $200 million for the export of non-traditional products...
...military aid and training and a history of social and political violence have made the armed forces one of the main arbiters of power in the country...
...ten years later that figure had increased more than five-fold.' Such growth challenged the coffee producers dominant grip on the economy, though it didn't shake it loose...
...They have been a thorn in the side of both Liberals and Conservatives for more than 20 years, but neither guerrillas nor government claims that the hour of truth is at hand...
...36-39...
...The first was rejected by the guerrilla forces as totally lacking in any guarantees and consequently a "surrender" rather than an amnesty...
...Of these, "Death to the Kidnappers" (known by its Spanish initials MAS) has been the most active...
...4 Given that only 20% of the work force was unionized, the overwhelming adherence to the strike was both impressive and, to the government, very threatening...
...While FARC sees its roots in the independent republics of the Violencia period, M-19 finds its own heritage in Rojas Pinilla's populist National Popular Alliance (ANAPO...
...There are at least three different ways to understand the overarching presence of the amnesty debate in the electoral campaign...
...NACLA interview with Jaime Bateman...
...Since the handbills were dropped, MAS has murdered more than 300 people...
...FARC and M-19 declared a truce, but withheld their full support until the army left the most conflictual rural areas...
...2) the Colombian military, bolstered by U.S...
...The street value of these very non-traditional Colombian exports is thought to be nearly $80 billion a year...
...Drug sales have become the single most dynamic element in the economy, yet remain tantilizingly outside the government's grasp...
...Tactically, if has created small nuclei of supporters in many remote regions of the country, "armed colonization," as one observer termed it...
...As Jaime Bateman Cay6n, leader of M-19 noted, "In Colombia the guerrilla movement has existed for 30 years...
...Turbay underlined this in a public speech-and private warning-shortly before he turned over the government to Betancur in 1982...
...Bankers were tripping over each other in a rush to lend credit-worthy Colombia anything its heart desired...
...But, in an unprecedented move, 33 active-duty generals and admirals publicly demanded more authority to deal with "subversion" in the country...
...The strikers' principal demand was for a 50% wage hike to combat the effects of years of uncompensated inflation...
...It is not the Colombians corrupting the United States...
...Today, nearly ten months after taking office, Betancur is being exposed as a demagog...
...Latin America Political Report, September 9, 1977...
...2 2 Washing the Dollars Finally, the laundering of illegal drug dollars into the GNP is having a marked effect on the legal economy...
...M-19 as a Legal Political Movement RJ: Why hasn't M-19 become a legal political movement...
...The National Association of Financial Institutions (ANIF) is the best known of these groups, Its director, Ernesto Samper Pizano, toured the United States in 1979-1980 to win support for the idea...
...They hadn't overthrown the state, nor did they seriously threaten to, but they had become the political and military issue in Colombia...
...Its non-violent recuperation of Indian lands usurped by large landowners won CRIC the emnity of the local power structure, often supMay/June 1983 21NACLA Report ported by the national government...
...2 The dark clouds of workers' discontent broke on September 14, 1977, when the country was shut down by the most successful general strike in 20 years...
...Both FARC and M-19 agreed to negotiate the terms of the amnesty with the government...
...Felix Correa Maya, a gas station owner from the western part of Colombia, is a typical product of this process...
...If the army formally pledged to accept the amnesty, the death squads didn't...
...The day that we defeat the army, this will inevitably be translated into a political program...
...Nor was DAS the only blemish on an otherwise clear military face...
...Who are these insurgents who so successfully oriented political discourse in Colombia...
...a decade's sales would obliterate the foreign debt of the entire Third World...
...Francisco De Roux, Candidatos, programas y compromisos (BogotA: Cinep, 1982), p. 39...
...Dollars burning a hole in their pockets, the newly affluent turned to imported "quality" items for their daily consumption...
...He asked that Colombians "rally around the military forces, the police, the judges, the security forces, so that they may vigorously fulfill their mission...
...Correa himself publicly argued that18 MACIA bind "those people [drug traffickers] have done good things for the country...
...Colombia has thus far avoided this abomination, but, as one reporter commented, "The conventional wisdom of the cocaine business holds that many influential families are deeply involved in the traffic, making enforcement a political nightmare...
...El Tiempo, February 1, 1983...
...5 The army high command, meanwhile, thumbing its collective nose at civil authorities, instructed all officers to contribute one day's pay to the defense of the soldiers accused of collaborating with MAS...
...President Betancur recognized that amnesty was but one step in a long (still undefined) process...
...For sectors of the military and right-wing civilians who sought an armed victory over the guerrillas, the issue was cogent in so far as it represented everything weak and indecisive about the civilian state...
...This figure is actually less than the total expenditure since much of the military budget is an official secret...
...Betancur built his campaign around the amnesty issue, and shortly after coming to office he revived Turbay's Peace Commission...
...It all appeared highly suspicious to the guerrillas, and all too reminiscent of previous amnesties...
...CRIC leaders were arrested, tortured, murdered...
...And Colombia will support those proposals...
...The DEA estimates that 80% of all cocaine and 70% of all marijuana entering the United States is smuggled in from Colombia...
...It burst on the national stage in 1974 by stealing the sword used by Sim6n Bolivar from the National Museum...
...The crime traffickers have been deprived of the political mask behind which they hide . . The field is now open for the actions of the legitimate authorities.' ""75 In case anyone missed his point, Landazibal made it crystal clear: "Let no one be fooled...
...During the 1960s and the early 1970s, Colombia's military establishment built its reputation as one of the world's premier Demonstration, Bogota...
...4 6 The brother of General Camacho Leyva, President Turbay's defense minister, was caught holding the bag-filled with two kilos of cocaine-on a military transport in 1977...
...Between October 1978 and August 1979, members of 36 trade unions were arrested...
...For L6pez Michelsen, it was business as usual on September 14...
...Colombia suffers from one of the highest rates of violence in the world...
...Strong export earnings allowed the country to build up $5.6 billion in foreign reserves by late 1981...
...tween guerrillas and the army...
...Similar failures wracked some of Colombia's largest banks in 1982, sending tremors through the Miami banking community as well...
...Further, as interest rates soared in the United States, potential investment funds flooded out of Latin America...
...ANIF, Didlogo, p. 22...
...If corruption was the target, law enforcers didn't have to look very far afield...
...The judicial reforms, to all extensive purposes, would create a permanent "state of siege" in the country...
...Peace Commissions and Amnesty Colombia has a long tradition of plans for amnesty to end insurgencies...
...FBIS, March 15, 1983...
...Although it is still active, the ELN never regained its former strength...
...195-196...
...The others, such as the Workers' Self-Defense Movement (ADO) or the Revolutionary Organization of the People (ORP), remain very small, urban-based groups...
...So great v that at times the exch black market was act rate...
...The rub is, clearly, that these exports do not help reduce foreign debts...
...diplomat-in February 1980...
...Translation by Fernando Torres...
...In turn, these agencies rapidly increased their holdings by buying more and more companies rather than investing in production...
...Secondly, even though the Colombian economy diversified and industrialized in the 1960s, the industrial sector was highly inefficient...
...May/June 1983 27 A iNACLA Report bians are still alienated from the basic rights of formal democracies...
...Less than 1% of all shareholders controlled nearly 80% of the shares of all companies registered on the BogotA stock exchange...
...aid to stick to its "professional" activities by focusing its attention on the guerrillas in the hills, not the politicians in BogotA...
...This approach was actually quite representative of national opinion...
...2, no...
...A campesina in Raquira...
...43 (January-March 1979...
...Latin America Regional Report, Andean, December 12, 1980...
...As the military undercut his domestic proposals, the Reagan administration was gearing up for a new attack on the international front...
...or else [it will be clear that] he has caved in completely to the military...
...We, too, are waiting...but we are reaching the point where we will begin again to mobilize the masses to demand that Betancur keep his promises...
...In the first place, inflation was both persistent and severe...
...Soon, he will either have to practice what he preaches by carrying out the reforms that the nation needs, and thereby confronting the militarist sectors head on...
...Where FARC is steady and undramatic, M-19 has become expert in the theater of revolution...
...Before the strike, officials had denounced it as "subversion and a conspiracy against our democratic institutions...
...Turbay's Administration...
...In late April 1983 the terms of a new civil law code for political crimes was released to the press...
...The merit of this amnesty is that it uncovers this farce...
...Colombia's GNP grew by nearly 7% a year from 1970 to 1974, peaking at an absolutely phenomenal 8.8% in 1978...
...The top command of the National Police Narcotics Unit was implicated by a former agent for drug trafficking...
...Finally, we don't believe that the masses' consciousness will necessarily rise through [participation in]a mass movement...
...Once the guerrillas are on the verge of taking power in that country, the United Sates and its allies inevitably will look for some interventionist solution to the problem, a "peace-keeping force...
...The high rates of interest which the banks had to offer to attract funds were not based on profits from productive investments...
...An estimated 40 people were killed that day, hundreds more wounded and over 4,000 arrested...
...It is also known that Betancur, whatever his intentions, remains in office, but not fully in control...
...For the guerrillas, the amnesty proposals and the offers for direct negotiations with top government officials were a measure of their continued presence and impact...
...the ability of the Colombian Federation of Coffee Growers (FNC) to direct the country's economic program...
...1 The connection between the death squad and the military was conclusive, but Betancur's reaction demonstrated the intricate balancing act he had to carry out among his own Colombian coal miner ministers...
...his support for political negotiations in El Salvador .. Nevertheless...
...15"Drug sales have become the single most dynamic element in the economy, yet remain tantilizingly outside the government's grasp...
...On the causes of the strike, see Jaime Carrillo Bedoya, Los paros civicos en Colombia (Bogoti: Oveja Negra, 1981...
...The military moved quickly to undercut any good intentions the government might have had...
...The Banco Nacional failed and was liquidated, and Correa himself was jailed...
...When, in October 1982, NACLA asked Julio C6sar Turbay Ayala if during the four years of his presidency (1978-1982) he felt that he was really in control of the state, he immediately and unequivocably retorted: "No...
...Subversion," he wrote, "is rooted in social injustice...
...Only eight months after his inauguration, Betancur crashed into the hard wall of Colombian reality...
...When all was said and done, the military's solution to the guerrilla "problem" would be accepted as the only valid approach...
...FARC's Non-Peaceful Road It is a matter of faith for U.S...
...70"" For most of its early history, M-19 was predominately an urban-based movement...
...In its long history, FARC has only published one or two programs, and these have dealt almost exclusively with agrarian issues...
...Re-enter the Brass One of the Colombian military's few ventures into the presidential palace in this century ended when the country's economic and political elites decided that General Rojas Pinilla had overstepped the bounds of propriety...
...As former president L6pez Michelsen observed, "Peasants who previously grew primary necessities and some agro-industrial commodities drifted into the new El Dorado of marijuana production...
...M-19, in particular, received many of its current leaders, including Jaime Bateman, from FARC...
...In 1976 the National Police Commander was investigated for alleged mismanagement of police funds...
...Yet beneath the surface, all was not well...
...Commodity prices are highly sensitive to natural disasters and political turmoil and a combination of these elements in the 1970s had relegated the 10c cup of coffee to the same dust bin of history as the 30c gallon of gasoline...
...While in the 1960s, the top 5% of the population received 36% of total national income, by 1970 it was walking off with 40% ' And by the 1980s, according to a former Colombian finance minister, "The country [was] one step away from the point where four or five people [handled] the main controls of the economy...
...FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), sees itself as a direct descendant of the guerrilla fighting that developed during the Violencia...
...El Nacional (Caracas), December 16, 1977...
...2 " Drugs and high coffee prices in the mid-1970s skewed the Colombian economy increasingly toward the wealthy...
...4 Not an inconsiderable army, given that the national police force only totals 45,000...
...While they support the nationalization of the banking system and public transportation, they speak of a mixed economy and of the necessity of stimulating private industry...
...In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was an average of 36,000 murders and 83,000 attempted murders each year...
...When Push Comes to Shove What cannot be taken away from Betancur is the new image he has given the government, his confrontation with Reagan...
...At the same time, more than two dozen military officers, including three top-ranking generals, were forced into retirement by the president and hard-line generals...
...counterinsurgency operations by achieving notable victories over a number of guerrilla movements...
...Arms and Disarmament Agency, WorldMilitary Expenditures and Arms Transfers, 1970-1979 (Washington, D.C.: U.S...
...Comit6 Permanente por la Defersa de los Derechos Humanos, Represidn y tortura en Colombia (Bogoti: Fondo Editorial Suramirica, 1980), p. 31...
...While these zones are essentially military areas of peasant self-defense, FARC has created some alternative structures, such as agricultural cooperatives, within them...
...GNP has shrunk dramatically, foreign reserves have diminished, and the country is now running a deficit in its current accounts...
...Beside the Indian leaders, over 16,000 peasants were arrested in the first four months of 1981, and 422 were killed...
...The Gentleman Doth Protest Too Much Unable to utilize the full resources of the economy, Betancur also found that he could not fully rely on the military to back his constitutional rule...
...The populist leader was dumped in 1957 to make way for the National Front, which reaffirmed the rights of Liberals and Conservatives to run the show...
...Now, the bulk of the crop is raised on the plains in the eastern part of the country...
...The majority in the court took the occasion to suspend 103 lawyers who had spoken out against the statute...
...the government is never going to dismantle the state's repressive apparatus...
...Although M-19's first action was in 1974, according to Jaime Bateman it only became a guerrilla movement in 1981...
...The most notable was Rojas Pinilla's 1953 plan to end the Violencia...
...First the government stretched out a magnanimous hand to the guerrillas...
...XVII, no...
...It originated not only outside the traditional economy, but beyond the realm of state control...
...4 7 Yet these facts-which are just a small part of the whole picture-make it exceedingly difficult to swallow the military's contention that it required greatly expanded powers to be able to slay the dragon of corruption and subversion in Colombia...
...Latin America Regional Report, Andean (London),June 18, 1982...
...One did not need a uniform to reap the rewards of crime...
...But his desire not to alienate his defense minister or the military was evident in his hurried announcement of the special 12.6 billion peso appropriation for the army and police security forces...
...The amnesty was dead...
...Unpublished document from M-19's 8th Conference, August 1982...
...MAS's roots are deeply embedded in two swamps: among drug traffickers (who unabashedly call themselves "The Mafia") and in the military...
...All information on Correa Maya from New York Times, December 27, 1982...
...Criminality, violence and drug trafficking have not lessened since the statutes were passed in 1978...
...The interview quickly filled more than six hours, of which we can only print a very small part for reasons of space...
...With only the military and police reporting for work on September 14, working class barrios around BogotA became, in the words of army officers, "war zones...
...Asociaci6n Nacional de Instituciones Financieras, Carta Financiera, No...
...Both are dedicated to the revolutionary overthrow of the status quo, but they are as different in their origins as in their approach to achieving state power...
...NACLA interview with Jaime Bateman Cay6n, Colombia, March 1983...
...Until 1976, M-19 saw ANAPO as its "principal theater of action...
...Drugs...
...The new plan offered unconditional amnesty for all "political criminals" save those responsible for assassinations "off the field of combat...
...Grass Is Always Greener Colombia's emergence as a major center of marijuana and cocaine production and distribution is a relatively new phenomenon...
...Similarly, more than 60% of those surveyed responded that social inequities were the most serious threat to peace in Colombia, while only 11 % considered "subversive groups" to be a major threat...
...aid and training, has become the most important behind-the-scenes arbiter of the country's destiny...
...Informe Colombiano (New York), Vol...
...Nearly 300 jailed combatants were released, and charges against some 2,000 others were dropped...
...Democracy and Non-Alignment M-19 retains many of its populist roots today, making it difficult to obtain a clear impression of what a future M-19 constructed state would look like...
...At the moment it has some 19 small military fronts consisting of 50-100 guerrillas each and located in 14 provinces...
...It is scheduled to be presented to a special session of Congress in May...
...All these rights would be furthered by an international policy respecting self-determination, peaceful coexistence and non-alignment...
...Throughout the 1970s, the Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), Colombia's militarized equivalent of the FBI, was continuously linked to malfeasance and drug trafficking...
...In fact, less than 1% of the yearly carnage was related to politically motivated acts of violence by those opposed to the government...
...Those interested in the entire interview should contact NACLA...
...28 (July 13, 1978...
...El Tiempo reported that more than 200 people were killed during January 1983 alone...
...They call for the creation of basic social services to protect both workers and the population as a whole...
...License to Kill The Paro Civico Nacional of 1977 was an important turning point in Colombian history upon which the military justified their increased participation in affairs of state...
...FBIS, March 15, 1983...
...It is unclear whether Betancur's proposal will attract new capital into Colombia's anemic industrial sector, or whether it will only further fuel speculative ventures in finance and real estate...
...You can deal with one [movement]," Turbay remarked, "but in doing so you create others...
...Semana (Bogoti), No...
...Penny Lernoux, "Corrupting Colombia," Inquiry, September 30, 1979...
...Thanks to high world prices, coffee was by then earning between $1.5 and $2 billion a year...
...Then the military and the death squads sprang into action, insuring that only the naive would follow the plan...
...How did he achieve this remarkable transformation from gas pumper to international financier...
...the virtual absence of any state presence in many areas of the country durJune 8, 1946, the signing of the charter of the Colombian merchant marine...
...Defense Minister General Luis C. Camacho Leyva, in Semana, No...
...Richard Gott, Guerrilla Movements in Latin America (New York: Doubleday, 1971), p. 252...
...From now on," Betancur promised, "the law will have the teeth and the punch that it previously lacked...
...As long as the army is not defeated, the [development of the] guerrilla's strategy must wait...
...M-19 chose Caqueti, a remote and inaccessible region of government-sponsored colonization projects located some 1,000 kilometers south of Bogota...
...What remained unclear was whether Betancur maintained enough control over the state to actually implement a new policy...
...Former President Julio Cesar Turbay used the occasion of his speech to announce the approval of the first $180 million (12.6 billion pesos) of a total of $430 million to be given to the police and armed forces in a special supplementary appropriation for the year...
...Eight months later, the new president, Julio Turbay Ayala, implemented a "security statute" which promised stiff penalties for acts of violence, terrorism or "disturbing the public order...
...It was these autonomously developed guerrillas who sought out the support of the PCC...
...The Colombian Armed Forces respect our institutions and our Constitution more than anyone else and with their patriotic and professional actions they are consolidating the democracy that makes us admired and respected by the rest of the world...
...Troops that were formerly sent to battle guerrillas in the mountains and jungles were now brought in to put down workers' strikes in the cities, on sugar plantations and in the oil fields...
...8. United States Senate, Foreign Relations Committee, Colombia-A Case History of U.S...
...How would you describe President Betancur's current policies...
...Ibid...
...ANIF, Didlogo para una nueva democracia (BogotA: ANIF, 1982), pp...
...After all, as the Financial Times of London dryly noted, "It would be difficult to be closer to the United States than Sr...
...dismantling the death squads, etc...
...The other guerrilla organization of the 1960s was the pro-Chinese Popular Liberation Army (EPL...
...The victims have also included a large number of trade unionists and other government opponents...
...Unexpected: the business sector criticized the government for producing the conditions which led to the strike...
...Only 5% thought that a military solution was preferable...
...Fortunes are literally made overnight-with power and influence not far behind...
...He attracted huge sums of investment capital to his other financial houses by offering interest rates of up to 60% . In 1981 he went international, purchasing the Bank of Perrine in Miami, renaming it the Florida International Bank...
...Latin America Political Report, December 9, 1977...
...El Dia (Mexico City), December 23, 1977...
...In this it failed...
...Washington Post, June 20, 1979 and Time, January 29, 1979...
...When Correa's Banco Nacional fell, worried investors began to claim their bank deposits on a massive scale producing a full-blown financial panic by mid-1982...
...As one observer put it, "The Colombian Communist Party, more by accident than by design, now had a guerrilla movement on its hands.' "" From its origins in the "independent republics," FARC has always maintained its essential base of support in the peasantry...
...You are corrupting the Colombians," complained former President L6pez Michelsen...
...M-19: Theater of the Revolution The April 19th Movement appears as the tactical and strategic opposite of FARC...
...See, for example, Mark Ruhl, Colombia: Armed Forces and Society (Syracuse, NY: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, 1980), p. 35...
...They said that they had been trained, armed and paid by the army to join MAS...
...Miami Herald, October 14, 1982...
...Following that debacle, Turbay chose former president Carlos Lleras Restrepo to head a "Peace Commission" that would dictate the terms of a new proposal...
...When we speak of a guerrilla movement we speak of the possibility of organizing an army," Bateman stressed...
...reactionaries that contemporary revolutionary violence in Latin America is the product of Soviet manipulation...
...But neither M-19 nor FARC totally abandoned the search for a less violent path...
...the rest were the work of MAS and other death squads...
...Although FARC often downplays its links to the Colombian Communist Party (PCC), Jacobo Arenas is a member of the PCC's central committee and many of FARC's other leaders are drawn from the Young Communists...
...Sinchez Torres, Colombia Represidn, pp...
...All waited to see what the military would now do...
...Like ghosts from the past, these same problems haunt current Colombian administrations and define what appear to be continual vacillations and contradictions on the part of the present government...
...MAS also threatened to execute any "kidnappers" who were imprisoned by the authorities and promised that if the authors of these crimes could not be found, it would take action against "their companions in jail or their closest relatives...
...A former DAS chief from Santa Marta was arrested in 1978 for cocaine smuggling...
...33-34...
...El Tiempo, February 20, 1983...
...Writing in a military journal 2324 NACLA lieport in late 1982, Betancur's defense minister complained that every time the army was about to crush the guerrillas, "the political authorities intervened and lifted the state of siege...
...The phenomenon can be seen in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia...
...By the mid-1970s the cost of living was climbing by at least 25% per year...
Vol. 17 • May 1983 • No. 3
