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This text is a comprehensive critical survey of Colombias political and social conditions and a homage to one of its most dedicated academics, Jorge Adolfo Freytter Romero, murdered by the regime, for his dedication to human rights.
The twenty-eight essays and documents provide us with a deep understanding of the existing structures of power and injustice, in both their domestic and international context, and the emerging forces and processes which are resisting and creating the bases for peace with justice in a future Colombia.
This text is a powerful antidote to the fabricated accounts of a stable and prosperous Colombia which have appeared in the respectable media in North America and Europe. The Financial Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the London Times, Le Figaro, have ignored the widespread sustained crimes against humanity and have presented a narrative which extols the military success and peace of the graveyard of former President Uribe, better known as the Butcher from Bogota.
The essayists present the facts and a lucid analysis which subverts the complacent complicity between the western media and the reign of terror in Colombia. The essays and testimonials discuss the life and times of Professor Jorge Freytter an emblematic representative of the committed intellectuals standing up to state terror.
I will proceed to discuss in telegraphic fashion seven dimensions of Colombias present realities which are essential to understanding the potentialities and hopes for a progressive Colombia.
Colombia, as Javier Giraldo Moreno, S.J., documents, is the murder capital of world: more academics, trade unionists, human rights activists and professors were killed over the past two decades than anywhere else in the world.
The public university and critical thinkers have been especially targeted. Several writers cite the exemplary role of the public universities as vital sources for activating the peace process and defining the social-economic bases for resolving the violent conflicts which permeate Colombian society.
The dedication of the book to a martyred professor has a larger meaning. The dedication recognizes the personal and collective courage in pursuing everyday life for those committed academics living in a terrorist state.
What do the intellectuals and academics in New York, London and Paris know of this human condition? The danger of starting a car each morning and fearing an attached bomb? Yet the hope for peace permeates Colombian society today. But the war continues. President Santos refuses to agree to a cease fire. The hope for the peaceful implementation of the agrarian accords and the return of small farmers to their land, depends on the demilitarization of the countryside , the dismantlement of the seven US military bases and the withdrawal of the one-thousand US Special Forces.
The hope of most writers is that in the future, Colombia can become integrated into Latin America ..That depends on looking south and not north; of joining Mercosur and not the US centered Trans-Pacific Economic Zone.
The hopes for a durable peace agreement must be realistic they must be based on an understanding of the reasons for past failures and recognition of the present enemies of peace. The peace agreement with President Betancourt (1984) began with free elections and left electoral victories, and ended with the massacre of 4,000 leaders and activists of the Patriotic Union. The peace agreement with President Gaviria (1991-92) ended abruptly with a military assault on the headquarters of the FARC. The peace negotiations with President Pastrana were ended by Plan Colombia and eight years of terror under Alvaro Uribe. In other words, the hopes for the effective implementation of present and furure peace agreements, rests on mechanisms controlled by a popular democratic assembly, free from military and para-military tutelage.
The Santos regime cannot be trusted to implement the peace accord, any more than Betancourt, Gaviria or Pastrana. The evidence for this conclusion is based on facts: Santos was the Defense Minister under President Uribe,and is co-responsible for the savage repression and scorched earth policy during Uribes reign of terror. Secondly, Santos refused to agree to a ceasefire during peace negotiations, instead he has expanded military ties with the US Pentagon. Thirdly, trade unions and peasant leaders continue to be assassinated with impunity under his regime. Fourthly, the entire military, paramilitary and intelligence apparatus responsible for crimes against humanity remains unchanged. To expect human and political rights and peace with justice to emerge from any peace accord in this institutional context is to raise false hopes, as the brilliant essays by Hernando Calvo Ospina and Dario Azzellini demonstrate.
The transition to democracy with social justice in Colombia, a goal embraced by all the contributors to this text, will not be easy. The examples of Spain and Central America are not promising. The experience of the Basque nation is incomplete. No peace accord has been negotiated. Madrid still holds 700 political prisoners and neo-liberal policies imposed by the right wing regime, in collaboration with Brussels, impoverish the majority of Basques.
In Central America the Peace Accords signed in 1992 perpetuated the power of the oligarchs. After the Peace Accords the yearly rate of homicides in El Salvador and Guatemala exceed the yearly death toll during the armed insurrection. The Central America Peace Accords brought neither peace nor justice just the flight of over two million poverty stricken emigrants to the United States, Europe and Canada.
Colombias best hope for peace and justice rests in the emergence of dynamic popular social movements whose struggles are lucidly analyzed in the essays by Javier A. Calderon Castillo, Erika Gonzalez, Asier Altuna and Maite Ubiria. The farmer and peasant movements demand an end to the free trade agreement; the repossession of land for the 3.5 million dispossessed rural residents; for the redistribution of fallow lands to the landless rural workers.
The heart and soul of any peace agreement is found in a comprehensive transformation of the agrarian economy. And here the public university and the academic experts have a vital role to play in designing new programs and development models applicable to Colombia. The essay on the contributions of Professor Freytter Romero and the role of the public university by Johnson Bastidas highlight the key role that the University plays in the struggle for peace with justice.
No account of the present and future of Colombia can be complete without taking account of the international context. Today Latin America is mostly free of military dictatorships and death squads (except Honduras). Regional organizations, free of US tutelage, are expanding; Colombias neighbors, Venezuela and Ecuador pursue relatively progressive policies. In other words the Latin American context is favorable for a democratic transition. The major problem is internal: President Santos support for US military bases, Special Forces and Pentagon military training and indoctrination programs. As the essays by Houtart, Pinzon Sanchez, Ugalde Zubiri emphasize, the peace process depends on changing global relations, dismantling the National Security State and applying international law.
Today the Colombian people are increasingly hopeful of a peaceful resolution of the conflict. The war option Presidential candidate backed by Alvaro Uribe was supported by less than 20% of the electorate. Abstention exceeded 60%. The peace camp provided the margin for Santos re-election. But the elections in themselves are only a symbol of peaceful hopes.
The hopes and expectations for peace and justice among the vast majority of Colombians rest with their own efforts to overcome entrenched militarism and oligarchical rule. This text, Presente y futuro de Colombia en tiempos de esperanzas provides a precise account of the hopes and challenges, the opportunities and obstacles ,to the realization of that elusive goal: peace with justice.