The Possibilities for Peace
Alape, Arturo
Recent local-level initiatives suggest that the key to a peaceful resolution of the conflict may reside in Colombia's towns and municipalities. Arecent article in The Washington Post...
...Alvarez Gardeazdbal has continued this policy as governor of Valle...
...Through these liasons, the FARC agreed to abide by a pact of nonagression...
...The statistics of the current bloodbath are particularly chilling...
...In the decade between 1987 and 1997, 277,143 people were assassinated...
...The boycott effectively prevented elections from being held in numerous districts in southern and eastern Colombia, where the FARC has historically been strong...
...5. Jos6 No6 Rios and Daniel Garcia-Peha, Building Tomorrow's Peace: A Stategy for National Reconciliation, Report by the Peace Exploration Committee (Bogota), September 9, 1997, p. 7. 6. Jacobo Arenas, Correspondencia secreta del proceso de paz (Bogot6: Editorial Oveja Negra, 1989), p. 70...
...At the crossroads of this impasse, local and regional leaders, along with important sectors of civil society, are trying to find ways to bring an end to the violence, suggesting that perhaps the key to a peaceful resolution of the conflict may reside in Colombia's towns and municipalities...
...With this initiative, civil society broke out of the resignation and indifference that has allowed violence in Colombia to persist for so many years...
...As a result, programs suggested by the guerrillas, such as the construction of new roads and other public-works projects, were implemented by the local government...
...The ensuing slaughter, dislocation and persecution of broad sectors of the population reveal a country deeply mired in the worst crisis in its history...
...3. Human Rights Watch/Americas, Colombia's Killer Networks: The Military-Paramilitary Partnership and the United States (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1996), p. 15...
...7. "Le Ileg6 el turno para demostrar si tenia raz6n o no," El Tiempo (Bogota), November 4, 1997, p. 8. 8. "Le lleg6 el turno para demostrar si tenia raz6n o no...
...The newly elected governor of the department of Valle, Gustavo Alvarez Gardeazibal, revealed in an interview how this process worked when he was mayor of Tuldia, also in Valle...
...The country's national leaders seem unable to confront the current crisis, responding to the dramatic expansion of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) with more violence and brutality...
...5 In the regions that it controls, the FARC has been following a strategy analysts have dubbed "armed clientelism...
...ver the past two years, the FARC has intensified its campaign to expand its local and regional influence, establishing a solid presence in over half of Colombia's municipalities...
...But, according to the governor, the attorney general's office conducted an investigation of his peace initiative in Tulia and found no irregularities, and since then, the government has reversed course and allowed regional and local dialogues with the guerrilla...
...Second, that I was forbidden by law to establish contact with them...
...I realized three things," he said...
...3 With a total of 185 politically motivated massacres in 1997 alone, Colombia has been singled out by international human rights groups as one of the worst violators of human rights on the planet...
...The FARC has gained muscle at the local level, as it demonstrated with its boycott of the municipal elections held last October...
...I "Colombians are on the verge," says The Economist, "of annihilating themselves...
...And third, that the insurgents could establish contact with the mayor via the peasants...
...4 Indeed, the country is in the throes of an all-out war, trapped between barbarity and the empty rhetoric of an autistic political class...
...The Mandate calls for the armed actors to declare a cease-fire and begin peace talks...
...The Mandate for Peace must now become the basis for the active participation of civil society in establishing the conditions for negotiations with the many armed groups operating in the country...
...This strategic reversal came about when the FARC realized that the consolidation of local and municipal political institutions bestowed legitimacy on the state with which it is at war...
...On the one hand, decentralization was a key FARC demand in its negotiations for a cease-fire with the government in 1983, and it strongly supported reforms that allowed for the election of mayors and governors, passed by the central government in 1986 and 1988 respectively...
...At the same time, however, the FARC was not able to stop elections from taking place in other parts of the country, revealing the limits of the guerrilla's tactics and its inability to project its growing military might into political power at the national level...
...The guerrilla exerts pressure on local mayors to invest in projects that benefit specific communities in order to strengthen its base of support among the rural population...
...How to bring about peace is the question that dogs Colombian politics today...
...In response to this upsurge of the guerrilla, the country's political leaders have turned to the army and its paramilitary allies...
...Partially as an extension of this strategy, the FARC has created a new clandestine political party, the Bolivarian Movement for a New Colombia, which actively co-governs in areas of guerrilla influence...
...Otherwise, it will become yet another frustrated attempt to bring peace to Colombia...
...2 This bleak view of Colombia from abroad is no exaggeration...
...National leaders initially saw such locallevel negotiations as a violation of the law...
...He has published several books, including El Bogotazo: Memorias del olvido (Planeta Colombiana Editorial, 1983) and Ciudad Bolivar: La hoguera de las ilusiones (Planeta Colombiana Editorial, 1995...
...In the past year, paramilitary groups have become more aggressive, spreading their reign of terror throughout the Colombian countryside...
...The guerrilla made a commitment to refrain from attacks on police outposts and peasants," he said...
...4. Statistics provided by Colombia's Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights...
...Alvarez Gardeazibal pursued local-level negotiations with the guerrilla by establishing talks with peasant groups in the region...
...I believe this is a viable micromodel," says Alvarez Gardeazibal, "that can be repeated without compromising local authority and without breaking the law...
...6 Last year's boycott, on the other hand, was a clear-cut attempt on the part of the FARC to undermine the very local-level institutions which the group had demanded in the 1980s...
...2. As cited in El Tiempo (Bogota), August 24, 1997...
...The guerrilla's strategy of boycotting the elections seems to contradict the FARC's previous stance on locallevel politics...
...By boycotting the elections, the FARC sought to undermine any and all sources of democratic legitimacy that the Colombian state may have at the local level...
...And the local government promised to take into account their suggestions for the areas under their control...
...Arecent article in The Washington Post describes Colombia as "the Bosnia of South America...
...It also calls for the combatants to respect a humanitarian accord protecting the civilian population and to refrain from killing, kidnapping, forcibly disappearing or displacing people, and involving minors in the conflict...
...The Possibilities for Peace 1. Robert Weiner and Ana Carrigan, "As Its Civil War Intensifies, Colombia Emerges as the Bosnia of South America," The Washington Post, August 17, 1997, p. C5...
...8 In this context, the importance of the Mandate for Peace-an initiative of broad sectors of civil society that was approved by more than ten million voters last October-becomes clear...
...7 As mayor, Alvarez Gardeazibal says that he quickly realized that the guerrillas controlled 23 of the 26 districts in the area...
...Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.REPORT ON CHIAPAS & COLOMBIA A cemetery in Apartado, in the northern province of UrabJ...
...First, that the guerrillas had replaced the state in these areas...
...n the zones of FARC influence, many local and regional leaders have come to realize that in order to govern, they must come to terms with the guerrillas...
...It corresponds to the reality of a country on the brink of the abyss, ripped apart by decades of violence...
...The Mandate for Peace and initiatives like that of Governor Alvarez Gardeazdbal offer hope that alternative routes to peace may be emerging from local and regional community leaders...
...NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Arturo Alape is a writer, historian and artist...
...In the first 11 months of 1997, 23,532 people were killed-an average of 70 people murdered each day...
Vol. 31 • March 1998 • No. 5
