The Triumph of Paramilitarism

Witness  |  E. A. Ospina, Oct-Nov 2009

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Anyone who comes from Colombia has been touched by the war. They will tell you of relatives murdered by paramilitaries, or kidnapped and held for ransom by guerillas. They will tell you of chainsaw massacres and social cleansing in remote villages you can only reach by boat or by helicopter. They will tell you of corrupt elites, vast criminal conspiracies overflying a ground-fog of petty crime. They will tell you of war, narcotics and social unrest.

They will tell you stories like this one: a good friend of my family was awoken by loud banging at the door to his Bogota apartment late at night. He opened the door and was shot to death, point-blank, by paramilitary gunmen. His wife managed to frantically hide their newborn baby in a closet before they found her and killed her too. Her parents were visiting; they too were shot, but her mother miraculously survived to raise the child in an uncertain future. To this day it remains unclear why they were marked for death, and the men who hired their killers remain unknown and at large.

Or perhaps you will hear of a professor of politics at the National University who was on his way to class one day and heard a sicario, an assassin, pull up in a motorcycle beside him. He raised his hand instinctively, and the gesture saved his life, deflecting the bullets that were meant for his face. The sicario left him bleeding on the sidewalk, and some passing students hailed a cab and helped him in.

As he staggered out of the cab at the hospital, he tipped the cabbie the contents of his wallet, to pay for the blood stains. There is something in this story which speaks to the terror and the courage of the Colombian experience. There is something to it that speaks profoundly to me.

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Presidents Bush and Uribe, tbd. 

I returned in 2006 to the land of my birth after finishing a Masters in International Affairs at Columbia University in New York. My area of focus, perhaps unsurprisingly, was human rights and security policy, the nexus of which has been the justification for the bloodshed that has bathed my country for decades.  Almost thirty, I was looking for something that I had done without all my life. I was looking for a home, and answers that could help explain stories that defined my image of a fatherland I had never known as an adult. I found myself instead a stranger in a strange land, and all the people and truths I thought I knew had changed so much it made me wonder if they were always this way, and it was I who had changed.

The years since the turn of the millennium have certainly been eventful in the history of the only major Latin American internecine war to emerge from the twentieth century. During the Bush era, as the rest of Latin America slipped to the left, Washington found a choice ally in Bogota, lead by President Alvaro Uribe Velez and his enormously successful right wing military-political movement.

Moneys formerly slated for counter-narcotics were authorized for counter-insurgency, and used with a relish by an empowered military that forced the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) into the heaviest defeats in its over half-century of existence. 

The guerilla organization’s second in command, Raul Reyes, was killed in a daring raid on Ecuadorian soil, and soon thereafter its highest profile captives, including the French-Colombian Ingrid Bentancourt and several Americans, were freed thanks to SIGINT wizardry. Old “sureshot” Marulanda, the FARC’s founding leader, died of old age, and some might say, a broken heart, while other commanders were killed or surrendered in rapid succession.

The country’s Paramilitary structures ostensibly demobilized, many of their leaders extradited to the U.S. on drug charges before they could reveal too many secrets. On the surface, everything seemed to be going well for the cause of democracy and the hope for a final, lasting peace in Colombia, one predicated on the undeniable success of Mr. Uribe’s leadership. Of course, as the reader well knows, appearances are often deceptive, especially in the realms of politics and war. The truth is far uglier.

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Bogota, Joshua Trevino

Even before the Bush regime came whimpering to a close in 2008, Washington’s view of the Colombian war was souring with complexity. Democratic congressional leaders were leery of approving a free trade agreement while labor union leaders were being systematically slaughtered in the Colombian countryside.

The Colombian military’s long-standing complicity with paramilitary forces was getting harder and harder to obfuscate, and the high level scandals involving members of the President’s party and family were becoming embarrassing to everyone.

Under the Obama administration, Washington has become more obstinate in its refusal to sign the free trade deal without significant human rights concessions, but has moved forward with a plan to make Bogota the hub of American military activity in the region, moving American troops into bases around the country in a destabilizing move that has alarmed not only the far left governments of Venezuela and Ecuador, but the Brazilians and Chileans as well. This may be the twenty-first century, after all, but the security dilemma remains a potent motivator for nations.

As the region enters what can only be described as an escalating arms race, with Venezuela making ostentatiously heavy purchases of Russian tanks, guns, missiles and planes [1] to counter the growing American presence,  tensions between Colombia and her neighbors have reached an all-time high.

Meanwhile the FARC insurgency continues to lose ground and the paramilitary structures to camouflage themselves in legitimacy while filling the power vacuum left behind in the countryside. The future of the country and the region is as uncertain as ever, and the plight of the vast majority of Colombians remains a dismal one, their human rights more curtailed than ever before, their economic future hostage to the world’s prevarications, their lives and livelihoods increasingly regulated by the intolerant hand of an elusively Paramilitary state.   

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Bogota, Joshua Trevino

The first thing you notice on the ride into Bogota from the airport is the smell; burnt tires and petrol mixed with mountain scents. A giant statue of the virgin Mary crowns the top of the forested mountain Guadalupe, opposite the cable-cars and bright lights of the monastery of Monserrate , presiding over the old colonial part of town and the tall skyscrapers of modern Bogota, like a testament to our mixed history.

But it wasn’t the distant past that concerned me in 2006, as I felt the cold mountain air buffet my face and cool the tears on my bearded cheeks. It was the vagarities of a confusing present, the strange, uniquely Colombian tale of war, drugs and power, that had brought a Paramilitary warlord to the pinnacle of legitimacy - and brought the terrible truth of the war to its knees before the victorious triumphal march of Uribism.

It is tempting to think that Alvaro Uribe Velez has single handedly transformed the Colombian political landscape. Drawing huge electoral crowds from the ranks of both established parties of the nation’s political class, the president’s U party has done what no third party could dream of doing in the United States, and effectively come to overshadow its established rivals. Credited with providing the security gains and economic policies necessary to attract foreign investment, and riding a tidal-wave of electoral victories that ignore the most vulnerable communities affected by the Colombian war, Mr. Uribe is something of a phenomenon.

He has not transformed the Colombian political landscape, however. There is a deeper story at work here than one man’s rise to iron fisted dominion in a war torn land. The significance of the letter U in the Colombian political vernacular will long outlast the man, for it puts a new and palatable face on a long and ugly history.[2]

The political classes have long brutalized and dominated the Colombian population at large, excluding most people from government, from wealth, and from access to social services. After the bloody period known as “la violencia” was through, the entrenched political parties alternated the presidency by fiat, denying any who would speak for the oppressed majorities a voice in government.

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Colombia, Christopher Kirk

Uribism is but a naked manifestation of an alliance long veiled and unrepentant, one that resonates with many stark lessons about the human socio-political landscape, sculpted as it has been by the furnace of the twentieth century. In the end it comes down to simple lessons.  Cannon fodder cannot vote. Nationalism plays well, and populism goes hand in hand.

In fact, the similarities between National Socialism and Uribe’s Social Party of National Unity are surreal. Both appeal to a place in the heart of the human psyche, that yearns for peace at the cost of liberty, that both fears and loves the bloodied fist of authority. Both ignore the human cost of their policies, both need scapegoats, and both result in a militarization of the public domain.

When I first returned to Colombia in 2004, for an internship with a major national human rights organization, the talk of the day was the president’s inviting several paramilitary commanders to address the Colombian congress. They did so in crisp newly-bought suits, an undeniable statement of the power they used to hold the Colombian people hostage. Their words were conciliatory, but their very presence was bellicose; the President’s extended hand of friendship struck a pose for the cameras even as it struck horror into the hearts of the Colombian Left.

I spent that summer compiling evidence of violations perpetrated against human rights defenders, for a report to the UN Special Representative for Human Rights Defenders. I read a great many stories that would make your blood run cold. I read about one small town mayor, Tirso Velez of Tibu, thrown in jail as a FARC sympathizer over a poem he wrote. After he eventually got out, he was running for governor when he was murdered.

Standing over his bloody corpse, the local DAS (Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, Colombia’s internal security organization) official was heard by witnesses to mutter, “they finally got that traitor.” I learned that this type of complicity and attitude towards human rights violations was the norm, rather than the exception, among the national elites in Colombia. It is the same attitude that has led Mr. Uribe to label human rights organizations and labor unions time and again as enemies of the state, as traitors and FARC sympathizers, legitimizing in the eyes of many the bloodshed and disappearance of their leaders.

Today, Mr. Uribe is perhaps the most strongly placed right wing ideologue in the world. He has already amended the Colombian constitution once to allow himself an unprecedented second term, and is now moving to do it again and go for a third. His military strategy has proven effective over the long run: let slip the hounds of war on the FARC, ostensibly negotiate with the ELN and smaller guerrilla groups, and tacitly ally with the paramilitary thugs, allowing them to step into the power-vacuum created in the countryside by the FARC’s slow destruction. 

Those casualties suffered by Paramilitaries are almost exclusively from direct combat with the FARC, and the few suffered at government hands to satisfy cosmetic quotas are often self inflicted, according to a reliable source who wishes to remain anonymous out of fear for his/her life. In the early 2000’s this is the way it would work, according to this source: A Colombian Army Colonel would call a regional AUC Bloc commander and say, I need fifteen kills, or “bajas”, which translates literally as “downs”.  The Paramilitary would then order one of his lieutenants to go shoot some of their fresh recruits and leave the bodies by the side of the road.  These bodies would then be displayed as proof of the Army’s cracking down on the AUC. 

The communities affected by the triumph of paramilitarism have had to accept the injustices heaped upon them, just as they have suffered long under the boot heels of the cold war brand of American influence.  It is a little publicized fact that while homicides may have gone down under Uribe, instances of human rights violations have gone up. Labor leaders are brutally murdered, entire villages rounded up and detained, hooded tribunals hand down spurious sentences, and paramilitaries move into people’s lands, bringing their own neo-feudal serfs and planting cocaine and palm trees where once there were food crops.

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Betancourt, Ernest Morales

A good friend who traveled extensively through the countryside reports that in towns ruled by the Paras, men are beaten for wearing long hair or earrings, tattoos are literally ripped from people’s skin, and extramarital sex is punishable by death.  While the world’s media focuses on the security gains the army has made in pushing back the guerillas, nobody is watching as the paramilitaries arrive to replace them. This is the face of the triumph of paramilitarism and Uribism in the Colombian countryside.

Comparing Uribe with his predecessor is like comparing Jimmy Carter to Attila the Hun. According to a source who guarded the presidential costal estate near Cartagena, former president Andres Pastrana would throw raucous and lewd parties every weekend, arriving with an entourage of party-goers from the global elite, which included Bill Clinton on one occasion. After all, who wouldn’t want to party with a Colombian president? 

In contrast, the same source reports Uribe arrives by randomly alternating routes, with a pack of grim-faced generals in tow. They stride quickly past their dress marine guards and into the mansion to prosecute the war all weekend. One is reminded of Ceasar among the Gauls, dictating two letters at once to a pair of scribes.

The President never stops. He’s like a machine. I once saw him stand for four hours, rebutting argument after argument from angry students at the Jesuit Javeriana University, calmly and coolly dispatching the line of youths that ran down the center of the crowded gymnasium like an indignant snake.

The only other time I saw him in person, he was sipping coffee brought to him by a liveried steward with brilliant white gloves, sitting alone on a stage, preparing to address a symposium entitled “Is the war being won?”,  where he began his speech by questioning the very premise of the event: after all, this wasn’t a war, this was a democracy exterminating packs of bandits.

When I stood up to leave in the middle of this speech, partly as a statement of my disgust, but more importantly so as not to be late for a date, his security guards looked like they were ready to shoot me. To their credit, I was wearing a beard at the time.

Uribe’s sons are notorious for using their security goons to beat up on people, and recently made huge insider fortunes by buying up lands whose property value was about to increase because of public development projects [3], but his wife seems to be a genuinely likeable woman.

There is a famous photo of the presidential family immediately after Uribe won his unprecedented second term in office by an electoral landslide. It shows Mr. Uribe and his sons surging up in joy, fists in the air, huge smiles on their faces, consumed by the ultimate narcotic of power. Mrs. Uribe, however, has her head buried in her hands.

The first lady’s staff explained to the press that she was very tired at that precise instant. Uribists indignantly say the photo is completely taken out of context and is in fact an insult to the first lady, who probably just wanted a normal life again. Unfortunately normal lives are in short supply for the wives of Kings.

Mr. Uribe is famous for holding court in small towns all over the country, flying in with a massive military and political entourage, holding town hall style meetings. According to my friend who traveled much of the country during the Uribe years, a typical interaction would go like this: A mayor respectfully protests the woeful delays in the construction of a new school the town has been promised.

The President calls out to one of his friends amongst the court, who happens to be a wealthy industrialist, and says to him, “Pepe, build this man a school, will you?”, and a month later, the school is in fact built. By then, of course, Uribe is gone, another several hundred votes in his pocket, never to return. 

Mr. Uribe has built a city in the land between two rivals, and in that city he has founded a small kingdom of legitimized paramilitarism in the heart of Latin America. In that city he will rule until such a time as the power structures he has built upon come finally crumbling down under the weight of their own injustice. Unfortunately, if Colombian history has shown us anything, it is that these power structures were built to last, and support a weight of human suffering that grows today beyond all measure. 

Long after Uribe is gone, the letter U will continue to cloak this edifice of despair in the gilded robes of legitimacy. The first and vital step in any attempt to heal the open wounds of Colombia is to strip bare the scaffolding and let the world see the grisly bones of injustice. Only then can we set out on the road of real transformation, remaking a new political landscape, built, not on the bloodied bones of the past, but the hopes and dreams of a people long oppressed, for a new beginning.

[1] See Reuters.com, Sept 15^th 2009, “Clinton: US worried by Venezuelan Arms Purchases” http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE58E60S20090915

[2] The letter U stands for Unity, but evokes the President’s last name. The party’s official name is “Partido Social de la Unidad Nacional” , or Social Party of National Unity.

[3]Semana magazine, April 20th 2009, “Crece polémica por enriquecimiento de los hijos del Presidente” http://www.semana.com/noticias-politica/crece-polemica-enriquecimiento-hijos-del-presidente/123069.aspx

and April 23^rd  2009, “Petro denuncia que por los terrenos de los hijos de Uribe pasará la vía Bogotá-Facatativá” http://www.semana.com/noticias-nacion/petro-denuncia-terrenos-hijos-uribe-pasara-via-bogotafacatativa/123154.aspx