The Drug War
Chernick, Marc W
ALMOST MONTHLY, A FEELING OF COLLECtive anguish seizes the political elite of Bogota. Estamos tocandofondo, people say. We have finally hit bottom. In 1985 it was heard when the military...
...I N SPRING OF 1988, WHAT WAS LEFT OF THE M19 kidnapped one of the leaders of the Conservative Party, Alvaro G6mez...
...And Colombian politics continues as usual...
...Barco decreed that pardon, and the two top comandantes, Carlos Pizarro Le6nG6mez and Antonio Navarro Wolf, left Cauca for Bogoti...
...Despite all this high-profile violence, the story of the 1980s was not the drug war--or wars, skirmishes really-but the dirty war...
...military equipment and to extend an immediate $65 million emergency loan...
...IN THE FIRST DAYS OF THE MOST RECENT drug war, Barco bared the teeth of the hated bilateral extradition treaty with the United States...
...It was not prepared to return to war, and the government was unable to offer any real concessions toward peace...
...The most visible of the principal actors, the members of the Medellin cartel, were men from lower middle class urban backgrounds whose careers proved that trafficking in marijuana and cocaine was one of the few viable routes for economic and social advancement in Colombia's rigidly stratified society...
...In November of that year, M-19 guerrillas stormed the Palace of Justice, taking hostage the entire Supreme Court...
...Latin America contributed 70% of global coffee production under the accord...
...The staccato interruptions caused by the major assassinations only focus the mind temporarily...
...But they are more privileged than the others, since collectively they THE PEACE PROCESS IN 1982, THE NEWLY-ELECTED GOVERNMENT of Belisario Betancur set Colombian politics on an un- charted course...
...24, No...
...The real money was going to those who processed coca into cocaine, and then marketed the drug...
...Many were uneasy...
...While in Panama, the leading members of the Medellin cartel, Pablo Escobar, Jorge Ochoa and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, met with former President Alfonso L6pez Michelsen and with Attorney General Carlos Jim6nez G6mez on separate occasions...
...The president at the time, Belisario Betancur, invoked a state of siege, and went after traffickers, laboratories and property...
...Now the contest will be with blood until the government accepts a dialogue...
...The second are believed to represent the principal capos of the Medellin cartel...
...Rewards of 100 million pesos (about $250,000) were offered on television and radio for information on the most notorious drug dealers of the Medellin cartel, Pablo Escobar Gaviria and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha...
...In the end, eleven Supreme Court justices, thirty-four guerrillas and scores of others were dead or missing...
...Semana, Aug...
...The Medellin cartel seemed willing to take whatever steps necessary to be tried in their own country...
...MORENA, for example, was opposed by most traditional politicians...
...Barco concurred...
...395, "El Cerco: Toda la Historia de la Persecuci6n a Pablo Escobar," p. 2 4 -30...
...In 1988, Congress authorized $15 million in special aid to the Colombian armed forces and $5 million for the protection of government officials from attacks by drug traffickers, in addition to sending a small number of military advisers...
...As the dirty war escalated, the victims were beginning to come from higher social and political strata, and it became increasingly difficult to discern motives...
...How much blood would have been avoided after the conversations in Panama...
...7 In the letter, they then offered a laundry list of concessions and gestures of good will that they are prepared to make: to mediate peace with the paramilitary, to suspend drug shipments, to hand over arms, explosives, laboratories, clandestine airstrips and hostages, as soon as they receive "legal and constitutional guarantees...
...as could be expected, Congress failed to act...
...8 Despite his early rhetoric, he had backed down on the drug issue...
...They reportedly offered to invest their profits in the Colombian economy, pay the national debt of over $12 billion and dismantle cocaine production facilities-in exchange for an amnesty and the right to return to the country...
...The next day, a national strike was called to allow people to attend the fallen leader's funeral...
...Moreover, the government openly supported a new counterinsurgency campaign, and remained disturbingly passive as paramilitary groups escalated the dirty war against FARC supporters...
...He had led an antidrug crusade and the paper publicly endorsed the extradition treaty...
...He reinstated extradition by presidential decree, overriding a 1987 Supreme Court decision that found the treaty unconstitutional...
...Barco decreed a "statute for the defense of democracy," which echoed the worst state of siege abuses from earlier periods, particularly the national security statute of the Turbay administration (1978-1982...
...His body was displayed in the rotunda of the Capitol and lines of well-dressed people snaked around the Plaza Bolivar and along the Carrera S6ptima, respectfully cordoned off by police barricades...
...5. See M. Arango and J. Child, Narco-trdfico: Imperio de la Cocaina (Medellin: Editorial Percepci6n, 1984...
...ambassador, were held hostage...
...Colombia's slice of the world coffee trade has been about 15% in recent years, second only to Brazil...
...Galdn's murder was interpreted by the political class as a signal that the political assassinations had entered a new phase...
...Rarely has a political party been so brutally and barbarously repressed as the UP...
...The elite political class and the middle class were mourning a man who had now become, for them, a martyr...
...This did not appear to be much of a departure from earlier declarations...
...77 (Winter 1989-90...
...That man was C6sar Gaviria Trujillo, who was associated more with the outgoing government of Virgilio Barco than with Galin's Nuevo Liberalismo...
...The president's advisers called this an unforeseen mishap...
...He also reversed himself on the controversial issue of extradition and announced that he would implement the treaty signed with the United States by the preceding government...
...20 Colombia's war on drugs has received widespread coverage in the U.S...
...This time, it appeared that Barco was serious...
...Like the previous two "wars," this drug war faded quickly...
...within a year, four had been assassinated...
...Exhaustive journalistic and judicial inquiries have shown that the mindless repetition by U.S...
...21, 1989, No...
...He had been elected as an alternate in 1982 on the Liberal Party ticket...
...Neither stood a chance, but they hoped the campaigns would become the foundation of a new movement...
...In 1985 it was heard when the military massacred guerrillas, Supreme Court justices and scores of trapped hostages following the guerrilla takeover of the Palace of Justice in the center of Bogota...
...23 (Peterborouigh, New Hampshire: Transcript Printing Company, 1986), p. 8 9 - 1 0 0 . 7. Scott B. MacDonald, Dancing on a Volcano (New York: Praeger, 1988), p. 33...
...demands have already met strong opposition, particularly from Brazil, which concentrates production on standard robustas...
...Ironically, as the price of coffee continues its nose dive, out-of-work pickers are taking jobs harvesting and processing coca...
...2. Washington Office on Latin America, Colombia Besieged: Political Violence and State Responsibility (Washington, 1989), p.33...
...Many in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia believe that the aid is ill-conceived and potentially destabilizing...
...Here the soldiers and police seem to have disappeared completely, abandoning the city burial grounds to the people, the revolutionaries and the few politicians that dared to enter...
...In January, the leaders decided to go forward anyway...
...A S GALAN STRUGGLED IN HIS FINAL HOURS of life on the evening of August 18, 1989, President Barco appeared on television and declared, once again, an immediate war on drug trafficking...
...The United States is concerned with the flow of drugs from South America...
...After a month, all efforts seemed directed at hunting and tracking down Pablo Escobar, Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, and Jorge Luis and Fabio Ochoa...
...The new galanista candidate would soon become a major contender in the polls against Durin bussan...
...The first are a group of three former presidents, the archbishop of BogotA and the president of the UP...
...Barco soon rushed to declare victory in the war on drugs, repeating all the while that his government "will never negotiate with criminals...
...Even the M-19 takeover of the Palace of Justice in the center of Bogotd on November 6, 1985 was over the breakdown of the initial peace accords signed with the guerrillas...
...is thought to be re-invested in Colombia, equivalent to 3% of the gross domestic product...
...The primary legacy of the drug war may well be the development of new instruments of repression and intimidation: Random bombings now occur in public places frequented by the Left or in those communities that are most organized, as has happened in several of the poorer barrios of Bogota...
...Any serious crackdown would have major negative ramifications for the economy...
...After consulting with the leaders and ex-presidents of the Liberal and Conservative parties, Pizarro and Navarro launched their campaigns for mayor of Bogoti and Cali respectively...
...Both Parejo and Lara Bonilla had aided Luis Carlos Galin in founding a dissident faction, known as Nuevo Liberalismo, to oppose corruption in the Liberal Party...
...In June 1985, M-19 claimed government betrayal and broke off talks only ten months after the first cease-fire was signed...
...11...
...1 " Some speculated at the time that the elimination of Galin would benefit Durdn...
...The crowd booed and refused to let him speak...
...Semana, Jan...
...Yet the despair rarely lasts...
...9 It appeared that the Medellin cartel was beginning to get impatient with the traditional political class, and was trying to create its own vehicle...
...Salom6n Kalmanovitz, one of Colombia's foremost economists, estimates that the cocaine trade generates approximately $8 billion annually for the Colombian cartels...
...Few Colombian leaders-not even Gaitdn whose death on the streets of BogotA in 1948 sparked an urban uprising and a decade of civil war-have been able to bridge the class chasm in Colombian politics...
...The first drug war soon subsided, however, and the traffickers who had sought refuge in Panama returned home within a year...
...Accommodation with this new group of elite actors will replenish and expand the political class...
...But soon the war moved to an entirely different plane: In September, an explosion leveled parts of the Bogoti daily, El Espectador...
...They were now actively employing violence to influence the course of politics on the national level-against those who had wronged them in the past, and who might impede their position in the future...
...One hears of the Medellin cartel and names like Rodriguez Gacha and Pablo Escobar...
...Meanwhile, the more powerful guerrilla movements are more active than ever...
...Until recently, the Colombian National Federation of Coffee Growers had been funding a project encouraging coca farmers to switch to coffee...
...He seems to have been personally behind the campaign of terror from August to December...
...It was not clear whether M-19's fate would be any different than that of the UP, which five years earlier was massacred for pursuing a similar objective...
...some called it a twenty-eight hour coup d'etat...
...4. See Manuel Vicente Pefila Gomez, Palacio de Justicia, Las 2 Tomas (BogotA: Fundacion Ciudad Abierta, 1986...
...M-19, once the self-proclaimed defender of Colombian nationalism and still in possession of Sim6n Bolivar's sword, which they stole from the national museum almost two decades ago, has come in from the cold...
...The peculiar choice of a victim half-way around the world led some to speculate that a loose pattern had emerged...
...Last year, Congress directed the Export-Import Bank to make a $200 million loan to the Colombian defense ministry for the purchase of U.S...
...Following the murder of Lara Bonilla, GalAn declared: "In this moment, the drug traffic knows that its enemy is Nuevo Liberalismo and for that reason wants to destroy it...
...At the cemetery, masked guerrillas were poised atop the giant white stucco gates that frame the entrance, waving the flags of the nation's guerrilla movements and machinegunning rounds of ammunition into the air...
...Colombia is the largest exporter of the mild arabicas which are increasingly replacing robustas as the drink of choice...
...Even as Barco and his administration (perhaps prematurely) declare victory in the war on drugs, cocaine production and distribution continues to rise...
...There is not much said about the Cali cartel, except that it is less confrontational and more closely linked to middleclass professionals...
...9 Prior to 1988 the United States had only a relatively modest police training program in Colombia which operated under strict congressional controls...
...Each pals has learned to mourn their own martyrs...
...What of the dirty war that defined much of the 1980s, and of the links between drug traffickers and military officers...
...See Charles Bergquist, Coffee and Conflict in Colombia (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1978...
...Signed by 74 producer and consumer nations, the accord established a quota system based on annual estimates of demand...
...With the exception of the latter, the list personifies the political class...
...The headlines screamed, it can't be, it can't be, it can't be, it can't be...
...Alongside and behind-always careful to maintain a distance of about two blocks from the marchers-were soldiers with machine guns and riot cops peering out from a wall of protective shields stamped "POLICIA...
...Rodriguez Gacha was the head of military operations for the Medellin cartel...
...8. See Semana (BogotA), No...
...Escobar released a communique the day after the assassination of Gal6n, in which he asserted that he was "tired of the legal charades that the government plays against [the Medellin cartel...
...Thus far, the violence has not approached the magnitude produced by the emergence of the coffee-exporting elite...
...The letters were written by "Los Notables" on one side, and "Los Extraditables" on the other...
...But from the beginning there have also been drug lords who operate with a much lower profile...
...unfair advantage...
...But coca production was the least profitable end of the drug business...
...Then the crowds were noticeably poorer, the color of their skin darker...
...I love the Liberal Party...
...More importantly, they made enormous investments in security (the dirty war) which significantly reduced or annihilated labor demands, social pressures and guerrilla violence...
...Already, even as parts of Rodriguez Gacha's paramilitary apparatus are being successfully dismantled, there has not been a reduction of the dirty war against the Left...
...M-19, the first to call for a peace process, suffered the worst...
...Indeed, drug terrorism directed against the state and the political class has practically disappeared since December...
...On September 1, 1988 Barco announced that any group which demonstrated good faith in negotiations, following a period of unilateral cease-fire, could enter into discussions with presidential advisers over their future incorporation into political life...
...officials that the takeover was financed and engineered by the drug traffickers has no basis in fact...
...The first step was an unconditional amnesty, approved in Novem- ber 1982...
...This was the largest such loan ever rushed to a foreign nation and the first for anti-narcotics assistance...
...The people have been tocandofondo for a very long time...
...In addition to the widely publicized land acquisitions -- estimated at one million hectares-the traffickers also invested heavily in the financial system, television and radio, drugstore chains and certain industries...
...However, it does not bode well for the Left or for a democratic opening...
...Peace gave the guerrillas a voice, but it exposed their leaders and sup- porters to paramilitary violence...
...It is also probable that this integration will not be complete for another generation...
...Barco announced that extradition would be reinstated, that bank accounts, farms, businesses and other assets of the drug traffickers would be confiscated, and he ordered the police and military to track down the traffickers themselves...
...He was mourned as an insider...
...Said one of the founders in an interview: "All my life I have been a Liberal...
...21...
...It had been a stormy period of negotiations, ambushes, assassinations and, despite the formal cease-fire, open combat...
...They have an uncanny instinct for survival amid an all-consuming violence in which many of them are, directly and indirectly, victim and perpetrator...
...The presidential candidate of the UP claimed in an interview that 70 of the party's activists were murdered in the first two months of this year by paramilitary death squads.'" He himself was killed on March 22...
...The other cartels, after the initial dragnets, were basically left alone...
...The flow of drugs to the United States did not significantly diminish, and the military did not focus their efforts on destroying cocaine processing labs...
...Again, we know names, such as Gilberto Rodriguez Oreguela, reported to be its maximum leader...
...Although the Medellin cartel did claim responsibility in press interviews in the days that followed, there was no obvious motive for his murder...
...18, 1989, "Declaraci6n de MORENA...
...M-19 expected the action, like the 1980 embassy takeover, would evoke sympathy...
...Ram6n Jimeno, Noches de Lobos (BogotA: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1989...
...Most references to the drug "kingpins" or "barons" alude to this group of nouveau riche narco-entrepreneurs...
...The other large insurgent group, the National Liberation Army, ELN, announced that it would only discuss "humanizing the war...
...Most recently, at the Cartagena summit attended by the presidents of Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and the United States, Bush offered $430 million more in military and economic aid to the three countries...
...By August, the government had agreed to create a one-time special nationwide electoral district exclusively for M- 19, lowering the number of votes needed for electing a congressman...
...It was the death of GalAn, more than any other, that brought the violence home to the political class...
...Of that, $1.5 billion...
...The drug traffickers were not only fighting those elements of the state who directly threatened their commercial interests, or their welfare...
...When Barco declared his war on drugs, and a crackdown on the leaders of the drug trade, it was difficult to determine where the power of the traditional economic elites ended and that of the drug cartels began...
...4, 1989, No...
...3 The assassination sparked the first of a series of declared "wars" by the government against the drug traffickers...
...Barco understood this when he met Bush at the Cartagena drug summit: "The best help that the United States and other industrialized nations can give us," he declared, "is to commit their governments to reducing the demand for drugs...
...El Espectador, p. 9A, July 21, 1989, "Los Jueces no Comprenden ProblemAtica Militar...
...MORENA's political program calls for the destruction of communism and the defense of private property, claiming the state has abandoned its duty...
...As the parade advanced from block to block, a desperate mixture of angry demonstrators, petty criminals, juvenile delinquents and homeless children smashed windows, looted stores and threw molotov cocktails...
...Parejo somehow survived...
...7 (1989/90...
...These businessmen form part of the traditional social and political structures of the country...
...The emotion stemmed more from the moving speech of Galhin's teenage son who denounced the drug traffickers as traitors to the Colombian nation...
...Defiant desperate anger: The coffin of slain UP leader Jaime Pardo Leal is carried through Bogota Among them was Luis Carlos Galin...
...Many in the political class felt that the original truce agreements Barco inherited, which allowed the guerrillas to form a political party without disarming, gave FARC an 34NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASgenerate and have access to wealth which is many times greater...
...They were the only cabinet members that represented this faction...
...In these and other regions, violence is a way of life...
...The death of Galan struck hard at the political class...
...HE U.S...
...M-19 was left with very little to negotiate...
...23-30, 1990, "Comunicado de "los Extraditables," p. 25...
...military equipment for that nation's war on drugs...
...Galin's body was not even buried when President Bush offered to send stockpiled U.S...
...They yelled, "This death belongs to the people...
...EMBASSY, LED BY AMBASSADOR Lewis Tambs, tried to turn the nation's focus toward drugs by proffering the thesis of the "narco-guerrilla...
...But what of Colombia's deep social conflicts...
...Its principal legal source of foreign exchange is coffee...
...What we are witnessing in Colombia is a conflict larly in the areas of Arauca and Santander...
...It is easier to ignore that, by 1988, more than 10 persons were being murdered daily for ideological reasons, reaching a total of 3,011 documented political assassinations, and countless others that were never reported.' And these are in addition to the 379 members of the armed forces and 599 guerrillas who died in combat during 1988 alone in a war that has lasted for decades...
...Moreover, the regional groupings in Barranquilla, Santa Marta, Pereira and Bucaramanga all seem to be intertwined with the structures of local and regional power and operate with little fanfare...
...The kidnappings were carried out not because the traffickers were strapped for cash as some press accounts speculated...
...Better a tomb in Colombia than ajail cell in the United States," is the oft heard quote in Bogotd...
...They will be the heads of the financial and investment gremios...
...That would be roughly equal to the gross earnings of Colombia's principal legal export, coffee, which in 1988 earned $1.6 billion...
...The Right is learning what the Left has known for decades: There is virtually no political space for alternative parties in Colombia outside of the two traditional parties...
...The armed forces of Colombia know how to recast the enemy to fit the needs of the United States...
...The financial capacity of the cartels, of course, is much greater when one adds their deposits in international banks and their stockholdings in North America and Europe...
...National politics were focused on negotiations with the guerrillas and the democratic opening of the political system-upon which Betancur had staked his prestige...
...It announced a unilateral cease-fire, and by January of 1989 was engaged in full-scale talks with the government...
...The killing of "El Mexicano", Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, by Colombian police on December 15, seems to have provided the key for both sides to save face...
...These are calculated to exceed $30 billion, equivalent to two-thirds of the value of the nation's entire capital stock, housing and land.' 2 The cartels are in one sense just another powerful economic group in a nation with several privileged groups linked to different sources of productive wealth, such as coffee, petroleum, textiles, bananas, flowers, sugar and other primary and manufactured products...
...In all their declarations, their preference for negotiations was paramount...
...the arms transfer was postponed...
...Durdn did not disavow the support...
...Durin, who had denounced dialogue with the guerrilla movements, represents not only the Right of the Liberal Party, but the right wing of politics in Colombia...
...While Betancur was offering guarantees for the incorporation of the guerrilla movements into political life, the drug dealers, in alliance with members of the armed forces, began operating death squads against the new forms of political activism the president encouraged...
...The drug barons were looking for, and found, political leverage...
...19, 1989, p.17, "Ahora la Cosa es Con Sangre, dijo Pablo Escobar...
...The cartels have invested that money throughout the national economy, facilitated by the Central Bank's longstanding policy of accepting dollars without asking questions, in what has come to be known as the "sinister window"' '-essentially a legal form of money laundering...
...M-19's philosophy has always been more social democratic than Marxist-Leninist...
...On April 30, 1984, the cartels murdered the Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, in retaliation for his cooperation with U.S...
...Populist political leader of the 1940s Jorge Eli6cer Gaitin once observed that Colombia is divided into el pals politico and el pais nacional (the country of the political class, and that of the rest of the nation...
...Kalmanovitz calculates that the combined investments in land and productive activities account for 6% of the collective wealth of Colombia...
...By the end of the decade the paramilitary groups, tolerated by some and actively endorsed by others as a counterweight to the guerrillas and the Left, had escaped even the control of the military...
...prison in the mid-1970s for car theft...
...Before the procession could begin, demonstrators and mourners clashed with police in riot gear...
...UniversidadNacional de Colombia(mimeo...
...In rapid-fire manner, he issued decrees authorized under the state of siege provisions in Colombia's constitution...
...M- 19's acceptance of Barco's proposals legitimized the government's contention that the other armed groups had no reason to continue fighting-a contention made with a straight face, even as the dirty war raged and Congress obstructed practically every reform proposed...
...The day before the March 11 municipal and legislative elections, the group handed over its arms...
...All of this is left unreported...
...Over the next few years, M- 19 was to lose over a dozen senior leaders...
...Three issues became apparent as the war escalated: One, the conflict was over political power and not drug trafficking...
...5 Many were petty criminals before getting involved in the drug trade, like Carlos Lehder who served time in a U.S...
...Last September 30 the 27-year-old accord expired and the price of Colombian coffee plummeted nearly 50...
...The military responded with brutal force, retaking the building after twenty-eight hours of uninterrupted combat with mortars, rockets and tanks...
...By late afternoon, a cloud of tear gas hung over the crowd outside the National Cathedral on the northeast comer of Bogota's central NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASplaza and burned the eyes of those attending the funeral mass inside...
...Although Colombian elites had always re- ferred to their political system as a democracy, the new president called for a democratic opening--borrowing the language then current in the Southern Cone-to incorporate the nation's armed opposition into the political process...
...Galin was, to some extent, an outsider, but he always had the backing of important elements of the Liberal Party...
...It had been pushed out of the cities and was never able to reconstitute itself in the countryside...
...In his annual report to Congress this past July, Barco's defense minister stated: "The most important issue facing the forces of public order is the confrontation with the VOLUME XXIII, NUMBER 6 (APRIL 1990) 37 VOLUME XXIII, NUMBER 6 (APRIL 1990) 37Colombia -I cartels of Cali and Medellin...
...Although there are core groups at the center of the drug trade, it is now virtually impossible to separate drug wealth from other wealth, and the investments of drug traffickers from those of other economic interest groups...
...Almost no reference is made to the BogotA cartel, though it exists...
...The current generation will be resisted, as happened, for example, when Pablo Escobar was removed from Congress...
...Galin was neither Gaitin nor Pardo Leal...
...In 1986, fourteen UP congressmen were elected...
...More importantly, it set the stage for the first negotiations between government and guerrillas in two decades of war...
...The manhunt was often portrayed in the Colombian press in terms that evoked a Rambo thriller with elite forces surrounding remote jungle hideouts, and the good guys always just one step behind their man.'" The third issue was that, as violence escalated, the stakes grew higher, and compromise or negotiations less possible...
...Much of the violence in the nineteenth century, and especially leading to the War of a Thousand Days at the turn of the century, related to the incorporation of a new coffee-exporting elite into the structures of the Liberal and Conservative Parties...
...That action focused world attention on the govemment's human rights abuses and torture of political prisoners...
...Drug Enforcement Administration agents and his high profile attack on the drug trade...
...much of the drug war is over this issue...
...While Betancur's peace commission initiated talks on agrarian reform, the cartels began to invest some of their profits in land, creating what political scientist Francisco Leal has called a counteragrarian reform...
...6. Discussions of the two types of drug traffickers can be found in Bruce M. Bagley, "The Colombian Connection: The Impact of Drug Traffic on Colombia" in Deborah Pacini and Christine Franquemont, eds., Coca and Cocaine: Effects on People and Policy in Latin America, Cultural Survival Report No...
...Such a large and direct role by the United States in the Andean region is unprecedented...
...T THE TIME OF GALAN'S DEATH, MOST OBservers saw only two real contenders for the presidency...
...He was not released until months later, when the Catholic Church agreed to host a new round of peace talks...
...WOLA, Colombia Besieged..., p. 109...
...Less than two years later, a more subdued crowd gathered at the same cemetery for the funeral of Luis Carlos Galin...
...But all this depended on congressional approval...
...Although the UP received only 4.5% of the vote in 1986, traditional party politicians complained that even that small percentage was won through intimidation and force, what they called "armed proselytizing...
...By strengthening the militaries of the three Andean nations-two of which, Colombia and Peru, are engaged in longstanding counterinsurgency efforts-the United States has launched itself into these guerrilla wars, thereby escalating and internationalizing the conflicts...
...From the outset he declared that all future discussions with the FARC would be limited to establishing an agenda for disarmament...
...M-19 was never a strong military force...
...FARC leaders also declared a unilateral cease-fire and offered their own peace plan, but the military and government did not seem prepared to talk to them...
...In fact, many of them appear to be uncomfortable with the way Escobar and company behave.' HE "DRUG WAR" WAS DECLARED ONCE again in late 1986 after the publisher of the Bogota daily ElEspectador was gunned down...
...It had gained political sympathy and strength through spectacular actions like the takeover of the Dominican Embassy in 1980, where 15 ambassadors, including the U.S...
...DOWN TO THE LAST DROP OCAINE IS NOT THE ONLY DRUG COLOMBIA exports...
...Yet it is inevitable and will continue, because the fight is over power, money and social position...
...In the conflict between the drug traffickers and the government, more blood has been spilled over this issue than any other...
...Barco's drug war is not the same one waged by the Bush administration...
...Discussions with the author, January 1990...
...Their declarations at the time made clear At the1985 guerrilla summit, six groups joined forces their intent: to tell the nation and the world that the govemment had violated the peace accords and broken the ceasefire...
...More than 300,000 farmers cultivate the crop, with an additional 2 million people directly employed by the industry...
...Back then the drug wars were still a side show...
...Following the terms of Barco's proposal, M-19's leaders had gathered their men and arms in a camp in the north of Cauca, a mountainous zone just south of Cali...
...It continued, "We are in favor of peace...
...In all, over 1,000 UP members have been murdered...
...It was heard again in 1987 after the brutal assassination of the president of the Uni6n Patri6tica, the new left political party, and again in 1988 after the killing of Colombia's independent attorney general...
...Moreover, it came immediately on the heels of the creation of a new political party, MORENA (Movimiento de Renovaci6n Nacional), that was directly tied to the Medellin cartel and the far Right, and which DAS, the civilian secret police, had linked to the paramilitary death squads...
...Just when most analysts had buried Lewis Tambs' notion of the narcoguerrilla, the Colombian defense ministry resurrected it...
...The son, his mother and brothers at his side, his voice cracking as he held back the tears, called for the continuation of his father's work and, to the surprise of many, he anointed a young politician as his father's successor...
...3 If the past is any indication, the drug barons will eventually be integrated into the traditional parties, maybe siding more with one than the other...
...See Semana Nov...
...While the elite may well sort out its conflicts with a nouveau riche that has already penetrated many areas of state and society, it has shown itself to be unable to address the serious social problems the nation faces--other than through violence...
...press...
...drug policy seems bound to lead this country to weigh in on the dirty side of Colombia's dirty war...
...On September 5, 1989, in his address to the nation, President Bush approved an additional $261 million to be divided among Colombia, Peru and Bolivia...
...2 1 However, there is a point where the policies of the United States and the Colombian elite converge: fighting the guerrilla challenge...
...But FARC did benefit from the peace process...
...1989), '"El Mexicano' habla sobre su guerra, su plata y su muerte...
...Many of them were founders of the movement, such as Alvaro Fayad and Ivdn Marino Ospina, who fell victim to police bullets in luxury, residential neighborhoods in Bogotd and Cali...
...Six weeks earlier, Colombian police and DEA officials had made the largest cocaine bust then on record with the seizure of a huge refining plant on the Yarf River belonging to the Medellin cartel...
...On the eve of the cease-fire agreements themselves, signed with four guerrilla movements, Betancur was forced to declare a state of siege in response to the killing of his justice minister, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, by the cartels...
...Finally, they offered to suspend all violence against political, governmental and business leaders, as well as against journalists, police and military officers...
...3. Bruce M. Bagley, "Colombia and the War on Drugs," in Foreign Affairs, Vol...
...The terror that had consumed the countryside was now being directed at them...
...For the first time, its voice was heard directly in Colombian politics and not filtered through the roar of machine-gun fire...
...4 ) Yet the drug trade was already changing Colombian society and was limiting Betancur's chances to achieve a peaceful settlement of the guerrilla war...
...They miscalculated...
...The Kennedy administration, determined to stem the tide of Third World revolution with a program of capitalist social reform and development, initiated the International Coffee Agreement in 1962...
...As the price moved up or down, quotas were eased or tightened...
...It is banished like an unwelcome intruder, and then quickly forgotten when several weeks pass without serious incident...
...If the legitimacy of Colombia's regime had hit rock bottom, M-19, left with negligible strength and minimal support, had lost any pretense of presenting a viable alternative...
...And for the leaders of Colombia's two ruling parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, there was a sense that they were exposed and vulnerable...
...GalAn's murder was their debut on the national stage...
...With the declaration of a real drug war, the political class found itself in a difficult position...
...Yet the pain and fright of the political class was not eased by the ascension of an inexperienced politician...
...Even before the cease-fire accord was signed, one of their most prominent public figures, former Congressman Carlos Toledo Plata-who had accepted the amnesty and returned to his life as a physician after decades underground-was assassinated outside his home in Bucaramanga...
...How different was the mood of the crowd at the funeral of Jaime Pardo Leal, the presidential candidate of the leftist Uni6n Patri6tica in 1986 and the man who came to symbolize more than anyone else the possibility of transforming Colombia's decades-old guerrilla insurgency into a legal mass movement...
...398 (Dec...
...Their letter provided an opening for the government to back off: "We plainly share the criteria expressed by [Los Notables] concerning the survival of the state and of the democratically elected government in the face of persons and organizations that, as in our case, live at the margins of the law, combating its institutions and the very existence of the established legal order....Therefore, we accept the triumph of the state, of its institutions and of the legitimately constituted govemment...
...Embassy...
...The United States is the world's largest consumer of both cocaine and coffee...
...The Colombian elites have been unwilling to cede authority on the political terrain...
...Yet the assassination of Senator Luis Carlos Galdn, a leading presidential candidate, on August 18, 1989, sent shivers up and down the spine of Colombia's political elite...
...El Espectador, p. IB, Feb...
...Bruce M. Bagley, "Dateline Drug Wars: Colombia: The Wrong Strategy," Foreign Policy, No...
...And his stature rose in death...
...But to the surprise of many, M-19 took up the president's offer...
...9. La Prensa (BogotA), Aug...
...Political reforms and other issues would no longer be considered...
...The story is one of good versus evil, of courageous leaders and journalists against vile criminals who stop at nothing...
...And Comisi6n Andina de Juristas, Colombia: El Derecho a la Justicia (Lima, 1988...
...Two years later, cease-fire agreements were signed with three of the principal insurgent groups: the April 19th Move- ment (M-19), the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Popular Liberation Army (EPL...
...Instead, it created a new movement, the Uni6n Patri6tica, using the already existing political machinery of the Communist Party of Colombia...
...On the evening of Pardo Leal's assassination, October 11, 1987, the frustration of the UP sympathizers erupted into riots and pitched battles with police in some urban barrios of BogotA...
...In 1988 and 1989, the federal attorney general and the governor as well as the police chief of Antioquia (where Medellin is situated) were killed...
...Civilian authority was trampled...
...In fact, it was Galin and Lara Bonilla who had spearheaded the fight to have drug lord Pablo Escobar booted out of Congress...
...Two, the government's efforts were directed at the handful of men in the Medellin cartel who were mounting the terrorist challenge...
...Dressed more like bankers than guerrillas, they were received by the minister of government and the presidential advisers...
...The new owners invested heavily to modernize and expand agricultural production...
...The hostages were released after an exchange of letters in January of this year...
...Unlike M-19, FARC did not expose its leadership to the death squads...
...The new president, Virgilio Barco, ordered raids on the traffickers' properties and a general crackdown on their operations...
...Guerrillas were certainly active in the regions where coca is grown, and they taxed coca much like they tax all the products of their zones, be they potatoes, yucca or petroleum...
...28 and Dec...
...67, No.1, Fall 1988...
...M-19's demands were minimal by most standards, but significant in the context of Colombia: an end to the state of siege, a cease-fire, and national dialogue...
...If [MORENA] has revealed its preference for Doctor Durin Dussdn, it is because the most serious and endemic problem the fatherland is suffering, is the [guerrilla] violence...
...The random bombings of public spaces was a new and disconcerting form of violence for Colombia's urban populations...
...HIS COMPLEX SITUATION HAS BEEN FURther complicated by the entry of the United States into the conflict...
...It is a classic story of economic wealth seeking political influence...
...The influence of drug money was initially felt in the countryside, where the cartels scooped up farms in deVOLUME XXIII, NUMBER 6 (APRIL 1990) 33Colombia cline and under siege by the guerrillas...
...In response to Barco's drug war, the Medellin traffickers hunted down former Minister of Justice Enrique Parejo, who had replaced Lara Bonilla, and gunned him down on the streets of Budapest, where he was serving as VOLUME XXIII, NUMBER 6 (APRIL 1990)3' VOLUME XXHI, NUMBER 6 (APRIL 1990) 31Repor on...
...The United States is demanding an overhaul of the quota system in favor of the arabicas and an end to the cutrate sale of surpluses to Eastern Europe...
...The Drug War 1. Justicia y Paz (BogotA), Oct-Dec 1988, pp...
...Mounting instability in the Andean region and extreme levels of violence both there and in the United States have propelled the coca and cocaine-producing nations into the forefront of US...
...d4 XAm 4a Colombia Colombia's ambassador...
...They would surrender their arms and transform their movement into a political party in exchange for a mere legal pardon...
...In December they were to hand over their arms in Cali to an international delegation established under the auspices of the Socialist International...
...Yet the early luster of Galdn's image as a progressive and renovating force had already worn thin...
...Colombia's elites have an extraordinary capacity for optimism and self-delusion...
...It is the children of today's drug lords who will marry into the traditional families and become congressmen and cabinet ministers...
...The State Department and the media have expressed major sympathy for President Barco and his nation whose democratic institutions are threatened by ruthless drug barons...
...Throughout 1989, M-19 tried to link disarmament to permanent political reforms...
...99-108...
...The most violent ones, grouped in the Medellin cartel, were in some sense declaring their intention to assert their authority nationally as they had come to do at the regional and local levels...
...Ibid...
...Twenty blocks of storefronts and the lower floors of office buildings were burned by fire or gutted by looters before the procession turned down Calle 26 toward the National Cemetery...
...MWC VOLUME XXIII, NUMBER 6 (APRIL 1990)RColombian t Americas Colombia which is not unlike others in the past when new economic elites emerged with the advent of a new commodityexport boom...
...Borrowing a script from the guerrilla movements, the Medellin cartel orchestrated a few high level kidnappings, including the sop of Barco's chief of staff...
...There was Galin himself, who had just re-entered the party after spearheading Nuevo Liberalismo, which appealed mostly to the small but growing urban middle and professional classes...
...Since 1980 the price has ranged between $1.20 and $1.40 per pound...
...Opposing him was Hernando Durin Dussin, the candidate of the business interests, producers groups and much of the Liberal political machine...
...Such negotiations could not be indefinite, and the outcome had to be the surrender of the guerrillas' arms...
...And no side offered a clear sense of direction...
...It is more comfortable to understand the violence as an aberration and to return to the familiar language of "perfecting" Colombia's democracy...
...FARC steadily in all areas of the country except the Magdalena Medio, where paramilitary violence was worst...
...The "drug wars" rarely touch these people...
...Both sides are working out the rules of a political modus vivendi...
...The most reactionary and violent members of Colombian society, the drug dealerscum-landowners publicly declared their support for Durdn DussAn when MORENA was founded...
...Not surprisingly, the cease-fire agreements were abandoned amid mutual recriminations...
...2 And, of course, then there are the massive displacements of people and entire villages due to stepped-up fighting in parts of the countryside...
...These men are not Colombians," he repeated...
...La Prensa, Aug...
...Of the guerrilla war, the oldest in the Hemisphere...
...The Colombian political class is interested in reducing the acts of narcoterrorism against the state...
...Although talks are scheduled for this spring, U.S...
...Despite this dramatic act, the political system shows no sign of a real democratic opening...
...The first extraditions in early 1985 led to a spate of violence against Colombian judges and a car bomb exploded outside the U.S...
...The government refuses to negotiate seriously...
...16...
...in November, a midair bombing killed all 101 passengers and six crew members aboard Avianca flight HK-1803 on a trip from Bogota to Cali...
...For the next two years, peace remained off the political agenda...
...Also see, Americas Watch, The Killings in Colombia (New York, April 1989...
...When Betancur handed over power to Virgilio Barco in August of 1986, EPL had also pulled out of the cease-fire, leaving only FARC within it...
...Colombian coffee growers owe a debt of gratitude to the Cuban Revolution for 27 years of relative stability in world prices...
...Barco also confiscated 989 buildings and ranches, 32,773 farm animals, 367 airplanes, 73 boats, 710 vehicles, 4.7 tons of cocaine, 1,279 guns and 25,000 rounds of ammunition in the first month.' 4 The traffickers, principally the Medellin cartel, responded with an escalating campaign of terror, burning the farms of regional politicians in Antioquia, and detonating bombs in banks, schools, newspaper offices, party headquarters, private homes in Bogota, Cali, Medellin and Barranquilla...
...In the mid-1980s, the death squads began to target and occasionally execute high political officials from the NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30traditional parties...
...Both FARC and ELN had grown in the 1980s: ELN spectacuIf economic integration had advanced relatively smoothly, and much of the new wealth had been incorporated into the relatively strong Colombian economy, the political integration of a new and powerful group of economic actors was another story...
...The Barco administration was hesitant and refused to attend, but the pressure was on for a new peace strategy...
...These were hardly guerrillas...
...and in December, the detonation of a huge truck bomb in front of the national police agency (DAS) headquarters, damaged buildings as far as twenty blocks away...
...They only had about 500 fighters at the time, many of them young men recruited in the last year...
...foreign policy priorities, surpassing current commitments to Central America...
...Donna G. Ellaby NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36Both sides were boxing each other into a comer...
...Furthermore, beyond the mourning for Galin, there remained a palpable fear among all strata of Colombian society: the fear that the government had lost control, that a slide into chaos was imminent...
...During the whole terrorist campaign of the drug barons, the entire question of the dirty war was removed from public debate...
...380, "'Tenemos derecho a ejercer nuestro dominio politico'," and "MORENA Se Destapa...
...That cartel is the FARC [the pro-communist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia...
...Afterwards, the crowd marched down the Carrera S6ptima defiantly, but slowly-as if to savor the grief -carrying the coffin of their slain leader away from the plaza, away from the Cathedral, the Palace of Justice, the Congress and the gilded city hall...
...Across five columns in large bold letters, the Bogota daily La Prensa summarized the mood that spread across the country, but particularly across the wealthy residential neighborhoods in the north of Bogotd, on the morning after the assassination: iNo puede ser no puede ser no puede ser no puede ser no puede ser...
...Of the rise of new social movements...
...14, 1990, "Entrevista con el Presidente Barco...
...Their strategy was designed to pressure both the elites and the population to support a negotiated settlement...
...Colombia Information Service, Colombia Today, Vol...
...We have demanded it for all to hear, but we can't beg...
...And, as before, the enhanced military and police powers were employed against the Left, the guerrillas and popular organizations...
...But there exists a third cartel which is politically and socially more pernicious, harmful and dangerous for the institutional stability of the country...
...Salom6n Kalmanovitz, "Los Efectos de la Lucha Contra El TrAfico...
...10...
Vol. 23 • April 1990 • No. 6
