#Cauca

Justice for Colombia’s indigenous people at last?

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In 1492 a long-standing conflict was born in the Americas: to what extent should the conquering Europeans respect the rights of the indigenous population?

In the 21st century where the rights of minorities have become a firmly established norm in the international community, shouldn`t Colombia`s indigenous people have their rights guaranteed by the Colombian government?

Earlier this week a deal was struck between the government and representatives of the indigenous population in the southern Colombian department of Cauca – where they make up 20% of the population. The resolution hopes to bring to an end a 22-year dispute over the failure to deliver the indigenous community land and autonomy as promised by the 1991 Colombia Constitution.

$42m will now be invested in land for the community, and the government has promised improvements in health and education coverage. The National Indigenous Organisation of Colombia (ONIC) described the deal as a “fundamental step” towards autonomy.

The agreement brings to an end a week of protests against the government which had paralyzed the Pan-American Highway between Cali and Popayan, causing food and fuel shortages across Cauca. Matters were aggravated with the deaths of two protesters amid reports of excessive force by government security forces. The State has claimed FARC infiltration of the protests.

Despite the agreement on land, the two parties failed to find accord elsewhere. The indigenous communities voice opposition to the effect of mining projects on the environment of their reservations, and also to the Free Trade Agreement with the US which they indicate is threatening their agricultural livelihood. Misgivings remain too over the government’s “democratic security” policies.

The government’s position is borne out of its economics; it believes that in granting concessions to the indigenous community it would impede the nation’s ability to benefit from the natural resources on indigenous reservations, and that granting concessions to protect indigenous communities from the negative effects of the FTA with the US would run counter to the Santos government`s liberal economic policies.

Nevertheless, the fact a deal was struck, does suggest Colombia`s indigenous community is growing in political confidence.  These communities have been some of the hardest hit by the armed conflict and the Colombian government’s failure to deliver on promises made 22 years ago has been shameful.

The promises go a small way to granting the indigenous people of Colombia the right to self-determination and to a decent standard of living, though the failure to reach agreements on the FTA, mining and the presence of government security forces in indigenous areas suggests that the saga is likely to rear its ugly head again in the future.

Colombia´s poverty rates shock as millions on 1.5 USD a day

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Extreme poverty is on the increase in Colombia´s most under-developed regions, with figures revealing over 40% of inhabitants of the remote Chocó have a monthly income of less than 91,000 pesos (47 US  dollars).

Colombia´s national statistic office DANE, yesterday published its poverty index, showing over 10 per cent of Colombia´s 46 million live on little more than a dollar a day.

Official figures show that since coming to power in 2010, the Santos government has taken as many as 700,000 out of ´extreme poverty´, and 1.7 million out of ´poverty´.

Despite this, nationwide poverty rates are running at almost 40% of the population while in Chocó, and Cauca this figure is much higher, 68 and 62% respectively.

Santos may argue that improvement has been made, but poverty is on the increase in Colombia´s hardest hit regions.

What is poor?

´Extreme poverty´ is classified as those who earn no more than 91,000 pesos a month, while the monthly income threshold for those considered ´poor´ varies according to department.

Here´s the thing. The government recently amended the way in which it measures poverty. Under the current regime, for a Colombian to be considered poor, he must earn less than 200,000 pesos (100 USD a month). This figure is the national average, and in poorer departments like Cauca once a worker earns over 168,000 pesos a month he is no longer considered poor.

Hang on… Someone that earns less than 90 US dollars a month is not considered poor?

Equally, the government does not consider poor a family of four with an income of 780,000 pesos. That´s 400 dollars a month. Yes, between four. Ask yourself; can someone living on so little really be considered to have moved out of poverty?

Colombia Politics view

The Santos doctrine is “Prosperity for everyone”. If 68 per cent of those from Chocó and if 62 per cent of those from Cauca struggle by with 90 dollars in their pocket, can the president really argue that the country is progressing – and for everyone?

Bruce Mac Master, the minister for Social Prosperity last year told Portafolio newspaper that the government had already reached 70% of the goals set for the four years of the Santos mandate. Well, if the government has already made such inroads into its target – laudable as that is – then the bar was, frankly. not set anywhere near high enough.

President Santos´government is building houses for the poor, it is undoubtedly focusing attention on those left on the margins, but is it doing enough? Is it surely complacent to argue Colombia is now a more “modern, just and secure” country (Santos´ new election mantra) when so many live in such abject conditions.

Colombia is one of the world´s most unequal societies.

The media and the political class have celebrated DANE´s figures over the past couple of years. Colombia Politics sees very little to cheer.

On the contrary, poverty in Colombia should be cause for sorrowful soul-searching, for reform, for action. For us, the DANE´s figures are a tragedy.

Picture, 24.

FARC leader returns from the dead to offer Colombians peace

Ramírez, photo El Tiempo

Leading FARC terrorist Fabián Ramírez, thought to have been killed in an air raid in 2010, reappeared in public yesterday through a video broadcast by Caracol Television in which he appeared to offer Juan Manuel Santos’ government a way out of Colombia’s civil war.
During an interview with British journalist Karl Penhaul, Ramírez, the second in command of the Marxist guerrilla group’s ‘Southern Bloc’, is seen arguing for an ‘agreement (between the government and the FARC) to end the war’. Peace, he says, should be sought through dialogue and negotiation. Is he fooling anyone?
Ramírez’s comments have been welcomed by Senate President and former Peace Comissioner Roy Barreras, for whom they represent a ‘change in tone’ from the FARC’s top brass. Santos’ Government, through Defence Minister Pinzón, however, has downplayed the importance of the video, arguing that the words of a ‘terrorist and drug trafficker who has consistently lied to Colombia’ cannot be trusted. Ex-President Alvaro Uribe has been equally dismissive of the ‘limitless cynicism’ of the rebel combatants, urging Colombians, in a video of his own, not to fall victim to the rebels’ strategy to win hearts and minds.
A blow to the FARC?
In November 2010 President Santos announced the death of alias Fabián Ramírez, the head of the FARC’s military operations in the south of Colombia, following a successful air-raid carried out in Caquetá. It was just four months into Santos’ regime and the president was now able to point to two major successes in his military campaign against the FARC, having in September already taken out the terrorist group’s military top gun ‘Mono Jojoy’.
A whiff of doubt has remained about the veracity of Ramírez’s death, however. It proved impossible for the military categorically to identify his body among those fallen, and rumours quickly began to circulate that he had escaped to Ecuador. The sudden appearance on camera yesterday of course confirms these suspicions. It also invites us to the conclusion that the recent upsurge in FARC violence – which has been particularly evident in the south of the country – has been orchestrated by this supposedly dead commander (either from within the country or across the border).
A search for peace?
There is much to suggest that ex-President Uribe is right and that the words transmitted during the interview form part of the FARC’s strategy to shift blame for the continued war away from themselves and on to the political class.
During Ramírez’s broadcast he communicates clearly what public relations executives would call the FARC’s ‘key messages’. He argues that the greed of the political class is to blame for the failure in the search for peace. His analysis is that the army and their elected masters need the war to perpetuate in order to secure the continued flow of  money (both in terms of US aid and through Colombian state coffers) they have grown to enjoy. It is a simplistic view but it is one whose imagined truth resonates with elements of Colombian society.
In spite of the FARC’s veil of innocence it is clear that little willingness to hold a truce and talk seriously of peace has been shown in the time since Santos came to power.
Coincidentally or otherwise the well-regarded independent media outlet, La Silla Vacía decided to publish today – directly following Ramírez’s appearance – the results of its analysis into the country’s security situation which show a significant increase in the number of terrorist incidents in the last year. La Silla revealed that attacks against infrastructure have shot up by over 100%, while ambushes or harassment of either civilian or the armed forces have risen by over 50%. This panorama is made worse when we consider the scenes of war witnessed throughout last month in the department of Cauca, and if we remind ourselves of the report by academics at the University of Sergio Arboleda in early July in which the FARC were reported to have returned to 50 of the territories from which in recent years they had been evicted.
There is no doubt that despite the blows that President Santos has struck against the FARC and despite the dwindling numbers of plastic booted rebels willing to fight, there is a renewed energy and an apparent vigour to recent military campaigns.
The hope is that this is a blaze of glory, the scream of a dying beast. President Santos argues that the dice has rolled for the last time and that following the deaths of Mono Jojoy  – and more importantly – that of the overall leader Alfonso Cano at the end of the 2011, the FARC’s days are numbered.
Santos’ analysis has led him to work with Senator Roy Barreras to create a legal framework for transitional justice should the FARC enter into peace talks and decide to demobilise. This framework was passed during the last session of congress and establishes the basis on which the crimes of former combatants would be judged. It also makes provision for certain elements of these illegal armed forces to enter the national political arena.
Uribe and his followers have criticised the new law for appearing to appease terrorist groups but the government argues it is a necessary legislative step to permit a fruitful outcome to potential peace talks. Many political commentators have insinuated that such talks are already taking place, in private ‘under the table’. Although this is possible it is something that President Santos himself fiercely denies, and the actions of the FARC do little to suggest that – if they are taking place – a conclusion is anywhere near in sight.
Who holds the cards?
That there will be a negotiation in the future is a certainty, but it is a question of when, and more importantly, on what terms. The FARC’s recent upsurge in violence is designed to improve their hand when they get to the table, while the government’s insistence that the guerrilla group is on its last legs plays to the same strategy. The war continues while the peace remains phony.
The appearance of Ramírez in this latest video must be seen in this context. His words are designed to attract sympathy, to play politics and to try to win an argument. The FARC are exploiting public scepticism in their political leaders to paint themselves as the victims; as the flag-bearers of truth and justice. The majority of Colombians will not be fooled by this, but there are sections of the society ready to side with anti-political forces, and Santos must ensure he does not lose a single heart or a single mind as peace moves closer.
Also posted on Redes Colombia

A ‘Colombian Bagdad’? Toribio, the FARC’s front-line

Local indigenous groups attack the army, photo, ColPrensa

Boos and whistles greeted Juan Manuel Santos this morning as his presidential helicopter touched down in Toribio, south-west Colombia. 

Santos lands after nearly a week of intense FARC bombardments that have left thousands displaced, and whole streets reduced to rubble.
Over the last decade the FARC have attacked 500 times. The municipal, known locally as ‘Toribistan’, or as Semana magazine put it, ‘Bagdad’, is at the front-line of a terrorist struggle against the Colombian state. 
Despite the president’s arrival, the situation remains tense with reports this evening that the FARC have shot down a military aeroplane.  At the same time, the area’s large indigenous population, frustrated at the apparent impotence of the state, are threatening to take things into their own hands, taking the fight to both the FARC and the military.The drama should not be over-played, this does not represent a return to Colombia’s past. But Santos knows that he must seize control, and re-assert his policies on national security.  

An impoverished front-line of narco-terrorism

Toribio, nestled in the mountainous countryside of the department of Cauca, is home to a community living through an almost perpetual battle against with the FARC. The first attack took place in 1983 and the guerrillas have returned over 600 times since. This year alone there have been 12 incursions. 
In July 2011 a chiva (traditional Colombian bus) packed full of explosives was activated outside the police station, killing four officers and destroying dozens of homes. Curiously, according to the publication Semana, these same houses were bombed again by the FARC this week.
The locality’s population has grown accustomed to ‘war’; it is not uncommon to see houses fortified with trenches and tunnels as rudimentary protection against the bullets and bombs of the guerrillas.
Toribio is a victim of its geographical location, forming part of the route connecting the centre of the country with the pacific coast, a key pathway for the transport of cocaine (the FARC’s subversive campaigns are funded in large part by the profits of the cocaine trade).
According to Semana, Cauca’s concentrated indigenous population also permits the FARC to move easily across the territory. The indigenous groups are exploited by the FARC to form a strategic barrier, limiting the ability of the military to carry out raids. Indigenous groups have been accused in some cases (by no means all) of actively aiding and abetting the FARC.
Despite the near permanence of the FARC in the area, the scale of the battle that began on Friday has surprised the authorities and has shocked the nation. Videos have emerged of soldiers crouching behind, and peering over, sandbag fortifications, firing towards the rebel mountain hideouts. 

No, this is not a Fallujah nor it is a Bagdad. Nevertheless as Caracol Television and RCN interviewed terrified residents fleeing their homes amid a cacophony of machine-gun fire, it was impossible to avoid the sensation that this was a town at the front-line of a civil conflict.
A failure of Santos’ security policies?
This crisis arrives as the president faces constant attacks from those who oppose his approach to national security. Little doubt remains that the issue is Santos’ Achilles heel; the most recent Gallup poll revealed that as little as 29% of Colombians back Santos’ anti-terrorist measures. 

Worse still for Santos, just days ago Alvaro Uribe officially launched the Puro Centro Democratico (PCD) political movement to fight against the president’s re-election in 2014. The PCD has promised to place the fight against terrorism at the heart of its campaign.

Although the public perception is negative, the Santos regime has delivered major blows against the FARC, taking-out not only the chief military strategist ‘Mono Jojoy’, but also the overall leader of the group ‘Alfonso Cano’.   

Santos argues that the recent upsurge in FARC activity is evidence of the guerrillas’ increased desperation – their blaze of glory. 

The problem for Santos is that because he has not stuck to Uribe’s hard-line Democratic Security doctrine – all out war against the FARC – many Colombians view him as soft. Santos, since coming to power, has adopted a more subtle strategy that looks to build the conditions for a post-conflict Colombia rather than just fighting fire with fire.
Opponents exploit the rumours, circulating with increasing frequency, that Santos is conducting secret peace talks with the FARC. The president denies this but it remains easy for Uribe to cast his old defence minister as a terrorist appeaser. 

Although Santos is right to look to the future, the nation remains concerned about the present.
Playing politics with the blood of soldiers

The Santos camp – as well as the rest of the nation – will be dismayed that his arrival in Cauca today has not calmed the situation. Guerrilla attacks took place before, during and after the visit of president – both in Toribio and in other parts of the department.
The images of indigenous groups threatening vigilantism to force out the military also make for unhappy reminders of the birth of the auto-defence groups in previous decades – groups spawned by the inability of the state to guarantee the safety of their territory in the face of guerrilla and criminal aggression.
Moreover Santos is battling against the public perception that he acted too late. On Sunday, the president announced that the government had the situation under control. Critics pounced, claiming that the ‘business as usual’ message was not one the country wanted to hear. The boos that greeted Santos as he arrived this morning suggest that his critics were right. 

It is hard to understand why Santos did not visit Toribio earlier. Events now appear to be (politically speaking) manna from heaven for Alvaro Uribe. 

Ex-president Ernesto Samper (1994-98) last night warned against playing politics with public order, and Santos himself last week asked for opponents to refrain from politicising ‘the blood of our soldiers’.

Uribe would do well to remain quiet until order is restored in Toribio. After such time it is impossible to see how he will not use the events of the last week, coupled with the evidence of a report published by the University Sergio Arboleda that shows the FARC have returned to 50 municipals from which they had been expelled, to launch repeated attacks against the Santos regime. 

Although the talk of Santos’ loss of control over the country’s security is exaggerated, this is now largely an irrelevance. The first casualty is always the truth…The danger for Santos is that he could end up neither winning the war nor the argument. 

Unfair as it might be, the Cauca of today reminds Colombians of a time when the FARC controlled large swathes of the country. This was a time before Uribe came to power – it was precisely the reason Uribe came to power.