Colombia: The March Outburst
Kalmanovitz, Salomon
[Events in Colombia of the first months of this year, marked by a massacre in Cali and the declaration of a state of siege, have brought to the surface a widening split within the ruling class...
...March 5, 1971...
...This alliance made the usuarios' associations much more radical, ready to struggle on their own terms notwithstanding the initial backing they had received from the "vanguard of the bourgeoisie...
...The demands of thile strikers were ouite political since the) included (1) more democratic control of education and (2) improved financial support and expansion of educational facilities for the Colombian masses...
...Retirement insurance and other benefits are of little effect because the bureaucratic jungle through which a claimant must pass in order to obtain them is familiar ground only to special intermediaries to whom the teacher has to sell his benefits at less than half their value...
...Other estimates for the centrals are much lower...
...The Pastrana administration took this step with the understanding that the teachers would be back at work before March 8. FECODE achieved a real victory thanks to the general crises facing the state at that particular moment...
...Another long range plan was to "privatize the university by charging higher fees...
...In FY 1970, 270 Colombian educators were being trained in U.S...
...In fact, Pastrana had already purged the Lleristas from the government and dismantled the state apparatus built during the previous regime...
...That same night the presidential residence, Palacio de San Carlos, was the scene of a hysterical circus scene in which all the personages of the decadent bourgeoisie and the latifundio came to pay homage to their state and to demonstrate their support for the President in the hour of crisis...
...In addition,-15there was the problem posed by political transition in the first months of the Pastrana administration, where the Llleras faction was well-entrenched but had no guarantee of permanence...
...In short, Colombia confronted the beginnings of a recession...
...A similar crisis had occurred two months earlier when most of the officials loyal to Lleras in the National Institute of Planning collectively resigned...
...ASC is affiliated with the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions and the Christian Democratic Movement...
...In such an opposition might participate the belisaristas, some segments of ANAPO and perhaps in some degree the Communist Party...
...Its risks, however, were immense in the event that the usuarios, once fully organized, should look for new alliances different from the one proposed by this Particular segment of the bourgeoisie...
...The author adds, parenthetically, "13 percent is the official figure, but it does not include disguised unemployment and government statistics on rural areas are not very reliable...
...But the fury of the government was a sign that it had suffered a defeat...
...and for research on new birth control methods to be used in experiments on the general population...
...This student strike, in time, would become the nerve center/flash point of the ensuing outburst of the popular classes, first in Cali, then spreading from city to city...
...In this way the creation of a specialized labor force would take place within the narrow confines of a system open only to the children of the bourgeoisie...
...The considerable degree of pauperization imposed upon the Colombian people by the prior administration was becoming even greater as inflation eroded the already meager incomes of the majorities...
...This was supposed to prevent student interest from interfering with the programs and aims which the most reactionary groups of Cali had planned for "their" university...
...Some portion of this amount may have been destined for higher education financing...
...They were closely allied with high school students who had been conducting a strike in the "Colegio de Santa Librada" in Cali, and had close contacts with peasant unions belonging to the usuarios, teachers, striking workers of SENA and with other independent unions...
...One of the strategies being proposed was that of Carlos Lleras Restrepo, the last president and strictly a representative of the industrial sector...
...Kalmanovitz comments, "A nine percent yearly rise in the general price level is usually considered very acceptable in a dependent underdeveloped economy...
...This comprised all those without land and those who are forced to sell their labor power periodically to the commercial agricultural sector...
...The mildness of the actions planned by the UTC, occurring as they did within a political vacuum, and the lack of political education among the rank and file of organized labor throughout the country, allowed the government to secure the non-participation of many unions in the general work-stoppage of March 8. This neutralization of the unions, however, came at a very high price to the state and to the bourgeoisie...
...And because the analysis developed therein assumes a degree of familiarity with certain aspects of the Colombian reality, we have added explanatory notes at several points...
...With strong financial and technical backing from the United States, it formed an important component of the overall developmental scheme which made Colombia the "showcase of the Alliance...
...involvement in Colombian higher education also made clear which local interest groups were allied with U.S...
...To top it off, there was a national work stoppage-16scheduled for March 8, planned since January by the Union of Colombian Workers (UTC), one of the country's three central labor confederations...
...2 (April-May 1969), p. 23...
...In this way, the supply of specialized labor power was greatly increased and the professional wage rate fell, with subsequent benefits for domestic and U.S...
...The weight of U.S...
...Lleras, who had originally designed and was still promoting a program of radical but essentially capitalist agrarian reform, counted on their support in the 1974 general elections...
...Some government sources set the figure at seventeen killed and 300 wounded, but the intensity of the struggle and the presence of right-wing snipers warrant a much higher estimate...
...However, the contradictions within the state began to be resolved when Carlos Villamil Chaux, the head of the Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform (INCORA) and the most important chess piece of the Lleras Restrepo faction within the government, was forced to resign from his post because of an interview he had given to the Associated Press backing the actions taken by the usuarios...
...RATIONALIZING" TIHE UNIVERSITIES The origin of the crisis in the Colombian university system can be traced back to the restructuring of higher education during the Lleras administration...
...When, after failing to bring the violence to an end, the military regime fell in 1957, the Liberal and Conservative oligarchies agreed to a political compromise...
...INCORA was in total paralysis the next day when most of its officers also resigned...
...The highly emotional tone of his words, the forced applause and the artificial cries of approval made the scene even more pathetic...
...Pastrana was elected in April of 1970 as the result of a blatant move by the National Front to alter the election returns, which had favored ex-dictator Rojas Pinilla...
...Contingents of students went to the barriadas and held rallies...
...The Pastrana Borrero administration had within its ranks that same group which would presumably be expropriated after 1974, allied with other reactionary forces such as finance capital and real-estate owners in the cities...
...LLERAS' PEASANT STRATEGY The essential step taken by Lleras Restrepo was to organize the peasants in "Asociaciones de Usuarios Campesinos" (associations of peasant users of state services in the countryside), which reached 1,500,000 members in 1970...
...The rally was to include school teachers, high school students, striking union representatives, usuario officers and university students...
...Rationalization of the educational system was spelled out in the "Plan Basico" (Basic Plan...
...They were expected to provide the means for the direct intervention of the state in the agricultural, industrial, and financial sectors of the economy...
...People had to be released from the factories at two o'clock in the afternoon, and the downtown sector was deserted by three...
...In other words, the function of the institutes was intended to be essentially technical and their composition technocratic -free from the vices which traditionally have plagued the state bureaucracy...
...Their support of Rojas severely complicated the rule of the governing coalition...
...TOWARD A POPULAR ALLIANCE The reactionary forces within the government pulled together to counteract a process of agglutination which had begun to take place in the ranks of the popular forces...
...Both of the major centrals have generally supported the National Front, but as author Kalmanovitz shows, the UTC has been the most vocal and militant of the two in making basic demands of the government...
...New lines of credit from European countries and the United States, however, seemed capable of at least maintaining the existing level of imports...
...This was provided in the issue of the election of the dean of the Department of Economics and Social Sciences...
...The working conditions are deplorable, most teachers being burdened with excessive teaching loads...
...STUDENT UNITY VERSUS REPRESSION On February 20 and 21 of 1971 there was a national student meeting in Cali...
...All that was missing was the igniting spark...
...The FECODE-led strike was a serious blow to the Pastrana administration...
...This earlier expression of the struggle between the two basic lines of the bourgeoisie grew out of differences regarding policies dealing with foreign capital, participatiQn in the Andean Pact, and government intervention in the economy...
...The same was true for railway, metallurgical and cement workers who gained substantial wage increases at a time when the state was desperately-18trying to demobilize the political forces that were up in arms...
...capital through foreign aid mechanisms, credit coercion and direct investments in the Colombian economy...
...But indeed for the first time in at least fifteen years many popular forces began to express themselves politically and create the very real possibility for a national organization of the left...
...The meeting produced resolutions which went far beyond specific student demands, and which in fact became so politically clear as to identify the student struggle with those of the Colombian peasantry and of the striking teachers and workers...
...The ANAPO leadership gave verbal approval to the strike, but in actual fact their organization did nothing to support it...
...The latter was directly represented by the Rockefeller, Ford and Kellogg Foundat'ions, and the technical missions of the universities of Nebraska and Tulane...
...First, the workers would stay home and would not demonstrate in the streets...
...For this reason, penetration was much more difficult in the National University (Bogota) where students and important sectors of both faculty and administration oppose U.S...
...Thereby, the economic environment would be rationalized for the benefit of domestic oligopolistic and foreign (U.S...
...Several "experiments in higher education" were carried out in this university in order to see to what extent new measures could be introduced successfully in the higher educational system as a whole...
...The demands set in Cali as a result of a problem rooted in academia alone have reached abroad into other fields and are being transformed into a prologue to the already planned general strike of March 8 whose ends are exclusively and absolutely political in and of themselves...
...4 The student reaction against this foreign interference in the universities was not long in materializing, most notably at the University of Valle...
...Their threats of going into the streets on March 8 never materialized...
...This might explain the fact that when the police invaded the university, setting off the consequent disturbances, great masses of the population of Cali knew what was going on and why it was happening, and were able to take sides...
...Lleras Restrepo had tried to accelerate the reform during the last two years of his term of office when he became fully aware of the threat implied by the rojista party (ANAPO) and its huge following in the cities...
...There would be no recourse to a clearly delineated class struggle...
...Called the "National Front," the resulting government was approved by a popular plebiscite in 1957 through a constitutional amendment destined to continue in force for sixteen years, beginning in 1958.- Providing complete bipartisan parity in all legislative assemblies and administrative hierarchies at national, departmental, and municipal levels, and the alternation of the presidency between parties every four years, the Front was intended to unite and stabilize the nation by dividing the spoils equally between the two parties...
...government's 1970 Area Handbook for Colombia (replacing the 1964 U.S...
...Rojas had started his bandwagon rolling with an antioligarchic platform and had captured the sympathy of workers, the unemployed, and lumpen, as well as small proprietors and others...
...3 In order to understand fully the acute urban unrest of these months, it is necessary to go back to the origins of the contradictions between the oligarchy and the people...
...There were first of all the narrow interests of financial, industrial and imperialist groups that were over-represented on the board of trustees...
...In all, production was reduced that day by a good 40 percent...
...The government thus imposed its own work-stoppage, even longer than the one proposed by the UTC...
...This government measure was very expensive for the industrial sector of Medellin (after Bogota's, Colombia's second largest), however, since it effectively cut seven hours from the daily production schedule for six days...
...intervention much more consistently than in new universities like the University of Valle in Cali, which were founded with important contributions from U.S...
...On the contrary, the action was designed simply as a silent .protest against the deteriorating conditions of the working class and a moral exhortation to the state to perform in a manner diametrically opposed to the way it had always acted and was again acting...
...In the same year, the Confederacion Sindical de Trabajadores de Colombia (CONSICOL) had 166,000 members and Accion Sindical de Colombia (ASC) some 14,000...
...An organization of public employees was directly resisting the legal structure that froze their wages...
...Pastrana addressed the nation, declaring the "total failure" of the strike...
...The other strategy aimed to perpetuate the same alliance of capitalists and landowners which makes up the National Front, which by law is to expire in 1974...
...During the weekend preceeding the strike and on Monday itself, the usuarios effected a new series of land invasions, taking advantage of the concentration of most of the Army in the cities...
...The University of the Andes and the University of Valle have received strong backing from the Ford Foundation, whose Colombian "beneficiaries" are listed in NACLA's Subliminal Warfare: The Role of Latin American Studies (1970), p. 9. The key role of the Rockefeller Foundation in the development of the Valle institution is described in the same pamphlet, p. 11...
...The new government operated with a complete lack of confidence, rooted in the awareness that it had no popular mandate and accentuated by its weakened position in the Senate and the departmental (state) assemblies...
...capital operating in Colombia...
...All union meetings were thus prevented and organizing for the strike became difficult...
...Lleras led a group which might be called the "vanguard of the bourgeoisie...
...It could be said that the UTC, the forces backing it, and the neutrals had dealt the Pastrana administration a serious blow...
...specifically they were exempted from the requirements of Liberal-Conservative parity established in the National Front agreement in 1958...
...The key to the situation, finally, will be the decision of U.S...
...It demonstrated that only the political and military organization of the people necessary to defeat the ruling class and its State is capable of breaking the pattern of expropriation and misery which faces the vast majority of Colombians, no matter what strategy is followed by the bourgeoisie...
...The school of medicine, for instance, became the training center for U.S.-sponsored programs of population controlThe administration's designs were well-known to students and professors who had already been involved in preventing an agreement between the University and the Peace Corps in 1968...
...This is not to say that there was a popular front against the oligarchy which could develop into a people's army in order to take over the state...
...It seemed possible that Carlos Lleras Restrepo might head a strong opposition to Pastrana's coalition of land-owners and capitalists...
...The stoppage thus manifested, at least in part, the internal con--20tradictions of the bourgeoisie, for the Lleras faction remained neutral at the moment when the government most needed its support...
...These assignments were instead more dependent on direct appointment by the captains of industry and finance and the very top political directorates of the industrial bourgeoisie...
...The most infamous of all the new measures, Law 3135, practically castrated public employees in particular and the union organization in general...
...Presidential alternation expires in 1974...
...The teachers' strike, as we will see later, was partially a response to the quantitative changes which took place in the government budget during this period...
...The Valle approach was to be duplicated at a later date in the other medical schools throughout the country...
...The problem was compounded by the fact that the economic boom was in its last stages...
...The former did not last to culmination day and the latter was the polarizing factor which contributed a special dynamic to the actions of March 8. TEACHERS ON STRIKE To be a public school teacher in Colombia is to hold one of the lowest status positions in the social hierarchy of the country...
...power and resources] were severely strained...
...In its plenum of January 1971, the UTC decided on a 24-hour general strike for March 8. The reformist, opportunist character of the UTC was indicated by the type of actions planned...
...These were the main elements of the general situation inherited by Pastrana Borrero, and from them can also be deduced the great discontent which was channelled by ANAPO in the 1970 elections...
...There were so many of them that the police were unable to disperse the majority...
...This schism is surfacing now in the final period of the National Front government, as the various political groupings in Colombia jockey for position in the 1972 legislative and 1974 presidential elections...
...Rojas, on June 13, 1971, ended months of speculation by announcing the formation of a new political party, with the support of opposition Conservative leader Belisario Betancur, to field candidates for legislative posts in the 1972 elections, Parity in the lawmaking bodies expires in 1972, so this will be the first electoral contest in over two decades in which all parties can participate without masquerading as Liberal or Conservative splinter groups...
...The peasants also blocked roads and ceased selling their produce to the urban wholesalers, causing scarcities in some city markets by the end of the week...
...The situation was developing quite dangerously for the bourgeoisie...
...Demonstrations continued throughout the country for the rest of the week...
...Legal permits were withheld from 22 unions, their bank accounts were frozen, their leaders jailed, and hundred of workers were fired from their jobs for participation in the strike...
...The main gateways of the city were effectively blocked, causing long delays on the route to Eldorado, the international airport, and in other strategic zones...
...By virtue of the agrarian reform's chronic failures, the peasantry began to feel that their superexploited position would never be resolved in this particular manner, and that they had to struggle in a political and even military manner against the landed oligarchy in order to obtain land and a decent life.2 Despite the fact that the organizations of usuarios were so constructed as to give predominance in them to small proprietors, this group was so exploited in absolute terms--in the marketing of its produce, the obtaining of credit, and the insecurity of their titles to the land they held--that they clearly saw the need to ally with the largest group of peasants...
...Demands in each of these categories were coming not only from Colombian capital, but also from U.S...
...The first group attempted to take the strike into the streets, and somewhat later tried to radicalize the nature of the protest...
...At this rate of progress it would take 1,000 years to redistribute property in Colombia...
...The Colombian agrarian reform program became law in 1961, the first such program to be created in accordance with the programs and policies of the Alliance for Progress...
...e.g., Manuel Urrutia in a 1969 study suggests 350,000 for the UTC and 200,000 for the CTC in 1965...
...The way the government reacted demonstrated that its inner contradictions had not been resolved...
...Representing petitbourgeois interests and certain industrial and financial sub-groups (no latifundistas) belisarismo differed very little politically from the Lleras platform...
...For education trainees, only Brazil and Vietnam claimed larger contingents, with 329 and 466 respectively...
...CONSICOL is the Communist Party's labor arm...
...The total of IDB loans to Colombian universities from 1965 to 1970 was $19,600,000, of which $15,177,304 was debt outstanding and $5,364,258 was still to be disbursed as of June 30, 1970...
...He was so tightly hemmed in by his sycophants that he lost his balance several times during the speech...
...In still others, it offered immediate employment to the invaders in road construction...
...It had been forced to enter into emergency negotiations with the labor movement, public employees (teachers), peasants and students, and in all cases from a weakened bargaining position...
...The other forces openly operating in the cities undertook actions that included a national strike of school teachers, several strikes going on in the metallurgical industry, in the National Service for the Training of Workers (SENA), several impending strikes in the railways and in the cement and construction sectors, and a local student strike at the Universidad del Valle in Cali...
...Striking unions and individuals were threatened with new penalties...
...In fact, already in November of 1970, usuario spokesmen had accused Llleras of organizing them for ulterior motives, implying that they had been cheated by the "capitalists...
...In effect, it would be a program in which the ruling classes would lead the struggle against the most reactionary segments of Colombian society with only nominal participation by the masses...
...The left remained divided about the strike...
...These organizations attempted to transform existing educational and research facilities into de facto servants of North American capital, which would train manpower specifically suited to meet its needs, and investigate the political, social and military environment as yet of unexploited areas with a view to their future penetration by U.S...
...The departmental liquor monopoly is an important source of revenue for education throughout Colombia...
...Industrial production was cut to perhaps half the ordinary daily output...
...The school was so completely patterned on U.S...
...capital, since they were the ones which imposed their narrow interests on the decision making bodies of the newly overhauled system...
...These included needs for manpower, the maintenance of low wage rates, rationalization of the agricultural sector, increased exports, monetary stability and credit availability...
...TOWARD MARCH 8 On March 5 the government resorted to a show of force so as to discredit the strike and frighten the people...
...The government now had to deal with the most widespread political opposition since the confrontation with ANAPO after rigging the past elections...
...The movement was succesful, the course was cancelled, and students and professors began meeting together and discussing the university, society, class struggle and imperialism...
...THE LLERAS REGIME The Lleras Restrepo administration (1966-1970) undertook to strengthen the state apparatus in order to meet certain needs of the country's capitalist productive system...
...Labor had already been beaten down by the Lleras regime...
...The usuarios had initiated alliances with workers, striking teachers, students and revolutionary organizations, since these were the first groups which backed the peasant actions in the countryside...
...One bipartisan opposition group, the National Popular Alliance (ANAPO), headed by ex-dictator Rojas Pinilla, showed massive popular support in urban areas in the 1970 general elections...
...capital...
...capital...
...The main significance of the purge in INCORA was that the Lleras Restrepo line was out of the question for the Pastrana administration, and that the "vanguard of the bourgeoisie" was either out in the cold or in the opposition...
...Moreover, thile plans of the UTC did not foresee that March would bring a national crisis and, with it, a totally different context for the March 8 general strike...
...A large portion of U.S...
...Troops and tanks were moved through most Colombian cities...
...The second position proved to be the sounder one since it was already too late to change the character of the action...
...This is not to say that the Colombian situation was developing into a popular front similar to the Chilean Unidad Popular...
...Kalmanovitz adds, "The CTC is . . . completely committed to the interests of the latifundio-bourcoisie, and opposed to the Lleras faction...
...In Medellin the strike was not felt, thus yielding a victory for the government...
...On February 24, the usuario groups took full responsibility for the invasions, declaring that the government had to negotiate with them on a national scale...
...Not only did they have to yield to immediate wage increases, but the harsh discipline they had hitherto imposed on the working class had also been broken...
...At the same time, there was to be an expansion of the internal market with the agrarian reform's delivery to peasants of lands in collective forms such as cooperatives, and thus an increase of aggregate demand for industrial products...
...Such an alliance would, presumably, court support of the usuario associations and the UTC...
...The State had lost face but it still stood...
...Some said that it deserved the total commitment of revolutionaries...
...A special course was to have been offered to train North American volunteers for all of Latin America...
...Unfortunately, it maintained rather unrealistic notions of the possibilities of struggling against the high cost of living, against the measures which prohibited the organization of public employees and denied them the right to strike...
...foundations and have received considerable loans from the IDB...
...It was amid these worsening conditions of the working class and the dark inflationary and recessionary horizons that the UTC was forced to take action of some sort to justify itself in the face of discontent among the rank and file...
...This, together with the blatant interference on the part of the president in appointing the new dean, resulted in an open confrontation in which all segments of the school were committed to the struggle...
...of Senate and House leadership and powerful elements within the Church, as well as those worker organizations such as the Colombian Workers Confederation (CTC), which were committed anti-lleristas, allied with the latifundista bourgeoisie and likely to sell out...
...The strengthening of the state apparatus was achieved essentially through the founding of several institutes descentralizados (decentralized institutes), such as the National Institute of Planning, the Statistics Institute, the Institute of Industrial Development -- which grew tremendously in its financing capacity during the period -- as well as SENA (see above), the Agriculture and Livestock Marketing Institute (IDEMA) and INCORA...
...imperialism and present this article...
...The point of greatest difference between the two groups consequently was what kind of agrarian reform would be carried out by the government...
...Pastrana meanwhile desperately sought the support of all factions of the bourgeoisie...
...At the same time, however, troops still occupied not only the university campus but also the entire city of Cali, and authorities were carrying out a chain of arrests of students, faculty leaders and political organizers at all levels...
...boycott of the World Coffee Pact had helped to create...
...Next, let us see how the contradictions initiated during the rule of the industrial bourgeoisie were bursting forth during the new administration.-17BEHIND MARCH 8 As the upswing continued with Pastrana now in power the capital goods of the economy [available production capacity] and all inputs with the exception of labor [i.e...
...interests...
...The Front, however, has been weakened from the outset by intraparty factionalism...
...The main effect of "Plan Basico" was to bring the state-sponsored training facilities into line with the needs of the capitalist productive system...
...institutions, out of 550 from all fields being trained in this country...
...capital such as the Agency for International Development (AID) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which permitted the subsequent intervention of these agencies in the educational policy of the Colombian state...
...If women were included in the sample, the unemployment rate probably would reach about 40 percent...
...Bogota was very hard hit by a transport strike...
...The higher incomes of the coffee-growing sector resulted in a great expansion of Colombia's internal market, a great impetus in the importation of plant and equipment, abundant state revenues which were invested through the institutos descentralizados, and, in general, the accelerated economic activity which began in 1967...
...Despite the involvement of Communists in the early, popular front days, CTC has been a faithful ally of the Liberal Party...
...Lleras saw, quite clearly, that only an alliance with important sectors of this peasantry, and thus a quite radical agrarian reform, would allow the segment of the bourgeoisie which he represented to hold power in the 1974-1978 term...
...This type of dependence makes FECODE a "soft" federation, a status which, on top of the specific legal restrictions on organizing public employees imposed by the Lleras regime, gave FECODE A very weak bargaining position vis a vis the government...
...The usuarios were to become the largest constituency ever organized in Colombia...
...Since the teachers were public employees according to Law 3135, they were not supposed to have a national organization capable of leading a strike...
...It was a coordinated action in which nearly 200,000 campesinos took part...
...The U.S...
...Finally, the University of Valle began channelling the bulk of its re- sources into Business Administration curricula and other graduate programs specifically designed for business executives...
...These groups were ready to pull together and struggle to the death against the Lleras strategy...
...intervention in the delicate balance of power, through financial and military means, could assure the ascendancy of either strategy...
...This city gave stronger support than any other to ANAPO in the 1970 elections, and the authorities decided to impose a daily five p.m...
...A student was shot to death and many more were wounded, some of whom later died...
...The economic result could only be one of two things: there would either be a drop in the rate of capital accumulation, or the ruling class would have to resort to inflationary measures and thus run the risks of greater business instability and prolonged battles with the workers...
...In other locales the government froze the situation and promised to negotiate...
...Thus, the price of land, farming supplies, and foodstuffs would fall, permitting a comparable lowering of wage rates in the industrial sector of the econo...
...The Colombian Federation of Teachers (FECODE) took a long step February 15 when it ordered one third of its membership to stop classes, to be followed by another third on February 22 and the rest on the 24th...
...On the morning of February 26, the university was invaded by army and police, just before a very large rally was to take place...
...Its essential aim was to double the production of professionals within the framework of existing facilities...
...Student demands included the resignation of the president of the university, the democratization of the university government to the exclusion of all "outside forces", and the reconsideration of the university's ties to imperialist foundations and credit institutions for the financing and control of the university...
...Because the federation could not legally conduct a national strike there could be no negotiation between the national government and the union leadership...
...Professors, students and investigators had been studying the election of the new dean for about six months, considering not only the person who was to occupy this position but also the content and form of the program to be taught in that school...
...New measures introduced during this period included limitation of the right to organize and to strike, the establishment of state labor tribunals, and the introduction of the system of management's counterdemands to those presented by the workers...
...The Asociacion Nacional de Usuarios Campesinos, which is the peasants' own trade union, has obviously decided not to wait that long...
...The student response was to declare a strike which was later backed by the Faculty Senate and all departments of the university...
...capital...
...In order to conjure gains from the working class during this upswing, the regime was invariably harsh toward workers organizations...
...medical education that the emigration of Colombian doctors to the United States increased to the point where they became one of the country's most important export items...
...The meeting drew up resolutions backing the student struggle in Cali, unified demands for democratic government of the universities and repudiated imperialist penetration in Colombian higher education...
...In order to cover the deficits caused in the university budgets by the shifting of allocations in favor of the institutes, the state had recourse to several credit lines of U.S...
...Thus the importance of the advanced state of disarray in which the agrarian reform finds itself today...
...In December of 1970 there was a sharp drop in the price of coffee, resulting from the oversupply that the U.S...
...A long series of frosts in the coffee zones of Brazil had caused a contradiction in the world coffee supply affecting the price of the dark fruit...
...At the other end were the students, professors and university workers whose interests were more identified with those of the Colombian people...
...The Lleras strategy was on paper very well thought out, and, indeed, it was even audacious...
...The state's financing capacity was also expanded by higher personal income-and sales-taxes, affecting mainly the already contracted income of the masses...
...Thus, the rate of capital accumulation was kept at a very high level as indicated by the GNP growth rate of 7.5 percent for 1970...
...at all times there have been pro-government and opposition groupings in both parties...
...CONCLUSION The State unleashed its revenge in the aftermath of the strike...
...And this time the enemy was composed of independent, and for the most part revolutionary groups, intent on carrying the struggle much further than the followers of Rojas Pinilla could ever carry it...
...In some places it moved rapidly to repress the outbreak, using troops to pull the peasants off the occupied properties...
...It meant the proportionate decline of state expenditures in education and welfare...
...The demands set by the usuarios included immediate nationalization of the occupied lands and responsibility of peasant organizations in taking charge of the agrarian reform process...
...The military regime of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla came to power in 1953 promising relief from the civil strife that plagued the countryside...
...CALI STUDENTS STRIKE The elements of the crisis at the University of Valle had existed for some time...
...It also had indirect representation through the World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) which extend credit to Colombian universities...
...This would serve, sooner or later, as an example to the working class as a whole in undertaking general wage struggles...
...Ill, no...
...about half the adult population is illiterate...
...THE NATIONAL STRIKE On Monday, March 8, most Colombian cities woke up to find their streets full of vehicles with flat tires...
...The new coalition would have a populist tinge, support a degree of protectionism against U.S...
...The Communist Party was also participating in the strike at this time through the few unions under its control, in an effort to strenghten the position of the UTC...
...At eleven o'clock in the morning it seemed like Sunday, but with more people on the streets...
...Should the impasse resist political solution, there would always be the military alternative...
...At the same time, the UTC was acquiring allies from belisarismo, a small faction of the Conservative Party led by Belisario Betancur...
...The AID Operations Report for FY 1970 reports $512,000 committed for technical assistance in Colombian education in the twelve months prior to June 30, 1970...
...This time, the "bourgeois front" found the contradictions within itself and between itself and the people bursting all at the same time and was barely able to control the conflagration of the masses...
...In other cities the general strike was more succesful than in Medellin, with partial slowdowns in Cali, Barranquilla, Cartagena and Bucaramanga...
...The simple fact that the teachers were on national strike and on the streets meant that Law 3135 was being opendly flouted...
...This was one of the most deliberate tech niques for depoliticizing the university at that time, and it was applied together with internal safeguards which made political agitation highly unlikely...
...That day a series of land invasions started all over the country, and by the second week in March about 3,000 occupations had taken place...
...The INCORA crisis was much more decisive, however, because the underlying question of alliances between the oligarchy's different interest groups was out in the open and had to be resolved by all means necessary...
...A vicious campaign against the UTC was unleashed through the media, demouncing the involvement of "Russians, Cubans and Chinese" in organizing the stoppage...
...No 'respectable' family sends its children to the public schools...
...Army Area Handbook) estimates total union membership at 1.2 million as of 1964...
...The conflict on the campus spread toward the downtown area of Cali as fleeing students, pursued by the troops, burned gas stations and vehicles they found along their way...
...Former president Carlos Lleras, however, refrained from sending a message of support from his temporary headquarters in Rome, where he was developing international strategies for "free world" agrarian reform for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization [FAO...
...These sought to break down the old coalition and lay the groundwork for a new one in which the old landowning class would be replaced by small rural proprietors in order to combat successfully against Rojas Pinilla, who in the last election had the backing of most of urban Colombia...
...The UTC was formed with Church and Conservative Party support in 1946 to combat the "communism" of the CTC, which had been organized ten years earlier...
...Of this total, some 449,000 were claimed by the Union de Trabajadores de Colombia (UTC) and 446,000 by the Confederacion de Trabajadores de Colombia (CTC), the country's major labor centrals...
...The effect of the presence of the landowning class in ANAPO was the total rejection of the party's program by the peasantry...
...As a consequence of the importance of these developments for post National Front Colombia, we decided to depart from our primary emphasis on the dynamics of U.S...
...Lacking a strong bargaining position and organizational tools of defense, the UTC was extremely vulnerable to the repression which the government employed, as we shall see further on...
...This tendency strangled all other projects that failed to serve the immediate needs of Colombian and U.S...
...On March 3, E1 Tiempo, the most important Colombian newspaper, editorialized: It is self-evident that the problem which originated in Cali and which is spreading to other cities by means of an unfounded solidarity has ceased to be exclusively a problem of the universities...
...A recent article in Latin America (from London) made the following pointed comment on Colombia's agrarian reform program: "According to the Paris daily Le Monde, the agrarian reform policy begun nine years ago has resulted in the expropriation of only 70,000 hectares of land and the resettling of only 5,300 families...
...It was resolved by imposing the interests of the landed and financial groups on the formation of policies the state would carry out in the countryside...
...Hence, the workers' protest could be silenced by the quasi-official media controlled by the ruling class...
...Simultaneously, and with the same purpose in mind, an attempt was made to depoliticize the university...
...March 23, 1971 EDITORS' NOTES 1 The violencia which wracked Colombia during the decade 1947-1957 erupted in the struggle for power between the country's traditional Liberal and Conservative parties...
...7 The students come from the barriadas (urban slums) and are sons of workers, the partially unemployed, or lumpen...
...In its 1970 Statement of Loans, the IDB reported the following loans approved from 1965 to 1968 and still outstanding in 1970: Institution (year of approval) Purpose University of the Andes (1965) improvement of the engineering program University of Antioquia (1966) construction of a new campus National University (1966) improvements on four campuses University of Valle (1968) construction of a new campus Amount: Total Disbursed To be disbursed US $ 1,000,000 993,718 a 6,282 US $ 5,300,000 5,114,997 185,003 US $ 7,700,000 5,893,424 1,806,576 US $ 6,600,000 3,233,603 3,366,397 a$38,438 had been repaid, leaving a debt of $955,280...
...On February 27, he asked for the resignation of the president of the University of Valle, thus meeting the first demand of a strike which had already far transcended the original limits of the protest...
...His program called for some expropriation of unproductive land but no interference with the commercial agricultural sector...
...The inflation rate which had been quite moderate in the past (nine percent ) began to move rapidly upward...
...All of the above-named institutions are listed among Colombian recipients of Rockefeller Foundation monies named in the NACLA Newsletter, vol...
...The participants began to arrive at the university and, finding the -19entrance closed, started struggling against the troops...
...These agencies were decentralized in the sense that they were removed from the direct interference of traditional partisan political groups and the church in the assignment of bureaucratic posts...
...Eds.] OLIGARCHY DIVIDED A rash of land invasions, national strikes of workers and teachers, student demonstrations and riots in most Colombian cities, have put the Pastrana administration up against the wall after scarcely eight months in power...
...What followed was a nightmare...
...USUARIOS POLITICIZED While the usuarios were being organized, the agrarian reform, carried out under a law passed in 1961 after a compromise with latifundistas, was barely operative...
...AID monies goes for training foreing personnel in the United States...
...Much clarity regarding these can be achieved by a review of the great changes introduced during the Lleras Restrepo administration -- in the altered distribution of the national budget and a series of policies implemented to promote a very rapid rate of capital accumulation during the 1966-1970 period...
...Villamil's resignation took place on March 4, after long deliberations between the political representatives of the latifundista interests and President Pastrana Borrero...
...For the government this meant that the specter of a coordinated, national student movement was again present...
...The provincial administration preferred to unload some of its excess inventory of rum on the teachers and paid them instead with "delicious Ron Caldas...
...Departmental budgets allocated to education are not only inadequate to begin with, but also are contracting as a result of the "state within the state" built during the Lleras regime, which channels the public revenue toward other ends...
...FECODE is dependent on the Latin American Confederation of Christian Unions (CLASC) and has connections with the Christian Social Democratic party of Colombia...
...The government could not respond positively to such demands, and so promised a "future dialogue" with the peasants...
...It gave the state the "right" to embargo union funds and take away a union's legal right to function, and it forbade all organizing activity among all workers and employees of the state...
...The future consequences this implied included a contracted internal market together with a sharp decrease in imports and therefore in the level of investment, and a restriction of economic activity in general...
...economic penetration, and would attempt to develop the productive forces in the countryside...
...This change meant not only direct confrontation with student organizations, traditionally revolutionary and nationalistic in their politics, but also with petit bourgeois groups such as professors and lower-echelon administrators who saw nothing good coming from the "rationalization" of the university...
...Each of the centrals has had a clear partisan tie...
...The same document reported an "Educational Sector Development Loan" of $10,000,000 authorized in FY 1969 and another of $15,000,000 in FY 1970...
...On February 21, 1971, this threat began to be translated into reality...
...The frustration of their repeated attempts to implement their thinking led to increased dissatisfaction...
...The pay is equivalent to 85 dollars per month, and even this miserable wage is sometimes not paid for nine months, until the term is over...
...Let us now examine in short order two movements which were very important in the unfolding of the crisis: the teachers' strike and the student struggle...
...The official school system is pathetically insufficient for.the needs of the Colombian people...
...With an unemployment rate of 25%, the prospect of an increase in the incipient recession, and the great discontent of the urban and rural masses, the Pastrana admin- istration was faced with a veritable Gordian knot at a moment when deep contradictions within the bourgeoisie hindered the framing of a unified, rational strategy...
...However, ANAPO counted in its directorate prominent landowners--Rojas himself is a latifundista--who found even the very weak reform carried out by the government too radical and strongly opposed it...
...The strike was, however, one of the harshest, best organized and militant in the teachers' history, with intense politization at certain moments in its contact with usuarios, students and parents...
...Finally, the back salary was repaid -- but not with money...
...Nonetheless student intervention helped to politicize the situation and increased the possibilities for the success of the stoppage...
...He placed military judges in charge of all political crimes, imposed strict censorship on all the media, and announced that a subversive plan on a national scale was in operation with the aid of un-named foreign nations...
...curfew five days before the strike...
...Deliberately overlooking these facts, the president of the school took the unprecedented action of unilaterally naming an engineer for the post...
...Everyone walked, since most bus and cab drivers did not take their vehicles out that day...
...The political development in Colombia was much less mature than in Chile, since the developing coalition would, from the very beginning, entail control by the bourgeoisie...
...The University of Valle in Cali was built not merely as a specific service to the needs of existing capital in the department of Valle, but, more importantly, as the prototype of what all Colombian universities would be in the future...
...The struggle grew more intense as new groups of bystanders and unemployed joined the students in their rampage...
...The following article, written in Colombia, is an attempt to analyse the situation as of March in the light of these considerations...
...imperialism as to which of these two strategies of the Colombian ruling classes ti should support...
...On the economic front the Lleras Restrepo regime could claim a general climate of prosperity as compared to the level of activity during the preceding presidential period -- but this was mainly a result of good coffee prices in the New York market...
...Pastrana is the fourth president under the "Frente Nacional," (National Front), a coalition of capitalists and landowners which has been running the country for the last thirteen years...
...In a case reported by the author that occurred recently in the department of Caldas, the teachers' pay had been withheld for about eight months...
...At two o'clock in the afternoon, a total curfew was declared by the authorities but by that time the riots had spread to many neighborhoods...
...Should this kind of strategy triumph with the close of the Nation--21al Front, the usuario associations and other mass organizations would be demobilized, and the interests of the industrial bourgeoisie and its temporary allies would again give the State its traditional role as guardian of capital and promoter of its reproduction...
...It has become an authentic subversion of the existing legal order of the nation...
...Events in Colombia of the first months of this year, marked by a massacre in Cali and the declaration of a state of siege, have brought to the surface a widening split within the ruling class as to how it should respond to the increased agitation of the Colombian people...
...Others maintained, however, that it deserved support, albeit with certain reservations, so as not to strengthen the reformist organizations sponsoring it...
...That same night Pastrana addressed the nation, declaring a state of siege including suspension of habeas corpus...
...The effects these changes imposed upon the Colombian system of higher education were also profound...
...Whatever the outcome, the "vanguard of the bourgeoisie" seems to have better prospects than the land-owning class and its allies...
...They made clear that if the agrarian reform were not carried out immediately by the government, the usuarios themselves would carry it out...
...In addition, there were at least two different strategies being implemented within the government, a fact that contributed to the ambiguity which characterized the first months of the administration...
...It reached monthly rates of two and three percent in November and the months which followed, and it seemed to continue unabated in spite of the weak measures undertaken by the Pastrana administration against it...
...The last national student organization, The National University Student Federation (FUN), was outlawed by the government in 1966 and all subsequent attempts to organize nationally had been forcibly repressed...
...What was termed later "Operacion Puntilla" (Operation Nail) cut the normal flow of traffic by 25 percent...
...In addition, its internal contradictions had grown sharper with the open separation from the Pastrana regime of the llero-lopista faction -- the "vanguard of the bourgeoisie...
...The situation grew even worse when vigilante groups of the government-sponsored Defensa Civil joined by the political police (Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, DAS), started shooting from cars and rooftops...
...The iron discipline thus imposed on the working class by the bourgeoisie had the clear effect of lowering the wage rate if one compares the nine percent yearly rise in the general price level with a wage increment of only seven percent per annum...
...The creation of the institutos descentralizados involved power shifts within the state apparatus, changes which had a tremendous effect on the distribution of the national budget...
...The initial reaction of the government to the threat of all these groups uniting was to close down the meeting place where they were to program their joint activities...
...Its vision was unrealistic insofar as it failed to focus on the need to raise the level of popular struggle and direct its energies against the interests of the bourgeoisie...
...The March outburst was an important lesson for the Colombian masses and their still infant revolutionary organizations...
...Second, the union had no follow-up plans for additional stoppages should original demands he rejected by the government...
...Representatives of all the 26 universities of Colombia were present...
...The primary purpose of those changes was to rationalize and maximize the production by providing specialized labor power for the booming economy, along the lines proposed by U.S...
...It is very important to point out that the student campaigns were not limited to the university...
...Thus FECODE forced the government to intervene in each of the country's twenty-two departments to obtain a uniform wage increase throughout tilhe country...
Vol. 5 • May 1971 • No. 3
