Colombia: About eves and hopes

There is no country in the Western Hemisphere more politically dependent on the United States than Colombia. Even in times of cyclical declines in Washington's interest in Latin America due to conjunctures and priorities in other regions, control over power in this country has never weakened.

There are many reasons for this. Firstly, an unsurpassed geopolitical location: access to two oceans (and the Caribbean coast is protected from the threat of hurricanes all year round), the border with oil-rich Venezuela and full access to the Amazon and Andes. Secondly, there are huge natural resources: mountain, water and forest resources that have not yet been fully taken over by corporations, mainly due to problems with communication infrastructure and chronic civil wars over a vast territory. Colombia is also the first Latin American associate member of NATO (since 2017) with the only army in the region with extensive real-world military experience.

As a result of the global capitalist distribution of labour and resources, Colombia was destined to become the main producer and supplier of cocaine to the US market. The reason for this, of course, is not the natural tendency of Colombians to drug trafficking, but in the ideal climate for growing coca (it requires about the same conditions as coffee), huge hard-to-control territories, the extreme cheapness of peasant workers constantly on the verge of starvation and the geographical proximity of the United States.

The drug trafficking factor is extremely important as a reason for the active US military presence in a country where political and military elites have long been close partners of local and international criminal organisations that control this business. Of the 1,720 tons of cocaine produced in 2018, 70% is of Colombian origin.

Colombian authorities and the press have traditionally blamed leftist FARC guerrillas for drug trafficking, even coining the term "drug communists". In 2016, peace was signed with the guerrillas, and they laid down their weapons. From 2014 to 2018, cocaine production in Colombia doubled. From 2018 to 2019 – by another 8%, and from 2019 to 2020 - by another 15%. About 90% of the cocaine consumed in the United States is of Colombian origin.

At the same time, the international sales market – mostly American a couple of decades ago – is rapidly diversifying. It is estimated that about 31% of Colombian cocaine ends up in the United States, 28% in Europe, 15% in Asia and Oceania, 17% in Africa, and 11% remains in Latin America.

Profitability remains the highest: Compared to prices in the country of origin, the product costs 25 times more in the United States, 47 times more in Europe, and 79 times more in Asia. From various informal conversations in Colombia – since there are no official statistics on this – the interlocutors insisted that if earlier the country had about 7%-5% of the profits from drug trafficking, today - with the active involvement of Mexican cartels, no more than 4%-3% remains with Colombian criminal structures, the lion's share of profits – for customers and distributors in the United States. And since the current foreign consumer is extremely demanding on quality, according to almost all experts, this level of quality can no longer be achieved without the participation of the world's leading laboratories with appropriate technologies in the business.

One more detail – today in Colombia there are 112 "free economic zones" that provide easy export logistics.

The situation of Colombian coca leaf farmers is similar to that of Afghan poppy growers. For them, this is the only chance to make ends meet in the complete absence of the state, road infrastructure for the export of agricultural products, and schools and hospitals in the vast territories of the hinterland.

One of the important points of the peace treaty signed between FARC and the government was the creation by the Colombian state of minimum conditions for the voluntary transition of farmers from coca cultivation to legal crops. The state has not fulfilled these obligations, and peasant leaders who demand their fulfilment are regularly gunned down by ultra-right militants associated with drug trafficking and the military, despite the complete indifference of society and the press. However, as well as the partisans who believed the state and laid down their weapons.

In 2021, 145 public leaders and human rights defenders were killed, and in 2022, 43 were killed. Since 2017, 285 former FARC fighters have been killed by hitmen. Between the signing of the FARC-government peace agreement in 2016 and mid-March 2022, the number of community leaders and former guerrillas killed in Colombia stands at 1,327. Moreover, these statistics are not complete, we are talking only about cases verified and proven by human rights organisations. Of course, the detection rate of these crimes is minimal.

Colombia is the country with the most active US military presence in Latin America. Despite the official figure of 7 US military bases in the country, experts insist that under various legal formulas and as a result of many informal agreements, there are from 40 to 50 military installations in Colombia under the leadership of regular US military personnel or mercenaries. These include dozens of military radars along the Venezuelan border, along the entire Caribbean coast, in the Amazon and near the Ecuadorian and Panamanian territories, and so-called "mining and energy and infrastructure battalions", often with the active participation of American officers and mercenaries from the United States and Israel.

Overall, the Colombian Armed Forces, which also controls the Police Corps, are one of the five fastest-growing armies in the world over the past 20 years. They number about half a million personnel, which is comparable to the size of the Brazilian army, but the population of Brazil is 4-5 times larger.

It is interesting that the Colombian military, which so often speaks on patriotic topics, does not recall the role of the United States in the separation of Panama from the country in 1903. It was the US Navy, in the interests of "protecting control of the canal", that forced the Colombian government to recognise the Panamanian separatists who rebelled against it and thus deprived Colombia of this important part of the territory.

It is also interesting to note that the first large-scale international operation of the newly created CIA was a plot to assassinate the popular popular leader and presidential candidate of Colombia, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, which happened on April 9, 1948. It was Gaitan's murder that triggered the most powerful social explosion that plunged the country into decades of bloody civil war, known as “La Violencia period".

La Violencia claimed more than 300,000 lives and led to the creation of the first peasant guerrilla armies in rural areas, marking the beginning of regular US military and economic participation in the "fight against communism" in Colombia. Their first economic contribution in those years was $300 million , and in 1999, under the new banner of "fighting drug trafficking and terrorism", the United States announced the creation of "Plan Colombia", for which $1.6 billion was initially allocated. The plan effectively legalised the permanent and ubiquitous presence of the US military and intelligence services in the country.

The main cause of many bloody civil conflicts throughout almost the entire history of Colombia is the still unresolved issue of land. It is the only country in the Western Hemisphere where agrarian reform has never been implemented, and with its vast land resources, wide variety of natural areas, and industrious peasantry, it remains the world's anti-example of causing social inequality.

In Colombia, the latifundium system is preserved. Today, 52% of the land belongs to 1.5% of its population. 1% of the country's largest latifundium own 81% of the Colombian land, and the remaining 19% is distributed among the remaining 99% of the owners. 0.1% of the richest latifundium own 60% of the land. At the same time, about a million Colombian peasant families have smaller plots of land than the area for grazing one cow.

As a result of almost 60 years of the last civil war between the leftist partisans of FARC, ELN, M-19 and other organisations on the one hand and the army and various ultra–right formations on the other, millions of peasant families were driven from their land, in recent decades about 2 million of them found refuge in Venezuela, almost a million in Ecuador and on the streets of Colombian cities, according to official figures, there were more than 5 million former peasants who were turned into beggars and homeless by the war.

Millions more have occupied the poor outskirts of cities, joining the ranks of the informal economy and crime. In 2021, the movement of people fleeing violence from one region of the country to another almost doubled. FARC was no longer a threat, but in the territories left by the partisans, instead of the promised presence of the state, new armed organisations and gangs appeared, often taking revenge on the peasants for supporting the partisans. Overall, more people have been killed in Colombia each year under democratic governments in recent decades than in all the military dictatorships of the Southern Cone (Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay).

To analyse the current Colombian reality, we need to take into account one of the most dynamic and influential factors – the church. Colombia is one of the most conservative and religious countries in the region. In recent decades, the influence of the traditional Catholic Church has been increasingly declining due to the rapid growth of evangelical groups calling themselves “Christians".

If Catholics were a historically established part of the country's cultural identity, evangelicals representing the centres of power, the mentality and finances of the United States are turning into the most radical ultraconservative support of the ultra-right, not only destroying the historically formed social fabric of society, but also justifying the violence of the army and paramilitary groups against any "violator" or bearer of "harmful ideas".

It is the evangelical churches that have now become the mouthpiece of a large oligarchy, developing the country's wealth of transnational economic groups and military elites in Colombia. Their impact on society-especially in rural areas where poverty is higher and education levels are lower-is enormous.

In the Colombian model of education, places are allocated in advance, with the complete exclusion of violations of class and racial hierarchies and social elevators. While the children of the elite are supposed to complete their education in Europe and the United States, the majority remains at the level of functional illiteracy, which is convenient for formatting with the help of media that is convenient for the system of employees and voters.

Culture has long been shaped by television, and in its most American form. And the Russians ended up being negative heroes for the dark masses, especially in Colombia. When American pilots bombed the first peasants armed for self-defence in the mountains of Marquetalia during the La Violencia years, the press called these partisans "Muscovites". Then the church spent decades telling terrified peasants that in the USSR, communists "eat children." After that - already in the era of television - a lot of American action films about "bad Russians".

For some reason, construction workers are haughtily called "Russian" in today's Colombia, apparently this somehow implies uncouthness and a love of physical labour, things that are especially despised by the elites. Although the elites themselves still often confuse the current Russia with the USSR, it is quite logical that they have absorbed cave anti-communism with their mother's milk.

With the outbreak of the pandemic, the difficult economic situation of Colombians has worsened dramatically. If in 2019 the number of poor people in a country with a population of about 50 million people was 17.4 million and 4.7 million below the poverty line, then in 2020 these figures corresponded to 21 and 7.5 million, which corresponds to 42.5% of the population. The concept of "poverty" does not mean a "poor life", but a lack of calories in the daily diet and hunger. Another 30% of the population lives in a state of constant "risk of poverty".

The official unemployment rate in January 2021 was 17.5% of the total working-age population, and in the first year of the pandemic, about 5.5 million people lost their jobs, leaving, of course, without any help from the state. Moreover, almost half of the working population (48%) is employed in the informal sector of the economy, i.e. they work without contracts, without health insurance, without the right to a pension and without any social protection.

In 2006, Colombia signed a free trade agreement with the United States, which deprived the country of the right to protect its own producers (although the government did not use this right before) and led to an increase in agricultural imports, which accelerated the economic crisis in its own hinterland.

The country's traditional agricultural products have dramatically reduced the competitiveness and profitability of producing farmers, which has increased the impoverishment of the Colombian countryside. Coca leaves turned out to be one of the few sources of income for hundreds of thousands of families. In Colombia, I was told that while farmers are unable to sell their own products due to the lack of roads, electricity, and transportation, the markets of large cities are filled with imported coffee, eggs, and bananas.

At the height of the pandemic, at the end of April 2021, when famine and the pandemic were growing in the country, the Colombian government, following the recommendations of the IMF, tried to solve the budget deficit problems by tax reform, imposing VAT on basic necessities, water, electricity, gas and telephone communications.

At the same time, the reform of the health care and pension system began, deepening the neoliberal privatisation mechanisms of the social system. The response to this was a nationwide strike, which turned into a real civil uprising, in which millions of citizens participated.

Clashes have been taking place for almost three months in all major cities, often involving gangs of far-right militants, traditionally subordinate to the security forces, in addition to the police and the army. The figures of dozens or hundreds of dead and "missing persons" are still the subject of investigations by human rights organisations, which have registered hundreds of cases of torture, abduction and rape of protesters by law enforcement officials.

Dozens of testimonies about the killings of protesters by the police and army, filmed by their comrades on mobile phones, were immediately removed by the YouTube censorship services. While the world press routinely ignored the dramatic events in Colombia, local media traditionally looked for reasons for protests in the communist conspiracy or the agents of unfinished guerrillas.

In the same months, another event took place, the importance and scale of which were initially hardly noticeable to anyone. In the midst of a deep conspiracy, then little-known young Colombian journalist, writer and lawyer Daniel Mendoza made a revealing documentary series that tells about the life and activities of Alvaro Uribe, the ex-president of Colombia, considered the winner of FARC, one of the creators of the army of far-right “paramilitares” militants associated with corrupt drug traffickers and politicians in Colombia and abroad.

Uribe is one of the most terrifying characters in Colombian history and at the same time one of the most popular presidents. The series was called “Matarife” (“Butcher”). This film began circulating on social networks on May 22, 2021, and a few days after the presentation of the first part, it was already watched by millions. The deadly risk-taker is hiding in France today. This is an interesting and rare case of how independent journalism, separated from major media outlets, turns into a social phenomenon that can influence history with the help of a minimal budget and the sincere conviction and personal courage of its participants. If desired, the “Matarife” series with an English translation is easy to find on the Internet.

On March 13, 2022, congressional elections were held in Colombia, the result of which was a surprise to almost everyone. The main progressive force in the country, the Historical Pact, which is putting forward the candidate of the centre-left Gustavo Petro for the presidential election on May 29, received twice as many votes as in the last election and turned into the largest parliamentary faction with 19 senators. Strictly speaking, 21, since two other senators elected from Indian movements also belong politically to the Historical Pact.

At the same time, the right-wing party of Alvaro Uribe (“Matarife”) “Democratic Centre” ceased to be the main faction of the Senate, changing the number of deputies from 19 to 13, thus becoming the fifth political force in the country. Conditionally, the left (more accurately, it would be called progressives) did not become a parliamentary majority, but never in the history of Colombia did they represent such a parliamentary force: the Historical Pact 19 + 2, the FARC party Comunes 5, Green Alliance - Hope Centre 13, only 39 out of 107 senators. The rest of the right and centre of right forces are also mixed, and if we allow ourselves a little optimism, we can assume that half of the new Colombian Senate will be controlled by supporters of social change.

Alvaro Uribe and another former Colombian president, Andres Pastrana, were quick to issue a statement about the "rigging" of the elections and "non-recognition of their results”. Given the serious influence of Uribe on the command of the armed forces, we can assume similar sentiments in the security forces. Alvaro Uribe indignantly stated that the Historical Pact won "for some reason" in the main territories of drug trafficking, anyone who understands the role of the ex-president in creating and financing paramilitarism understands the whole surrealism of this statement.

What are the possible ways of "non-recognition" of the election results? A military coup seems unlikely, despite the distraction of the world's media to Ukraine and perhaps soon Taiwan; among a significant part of the new generation of Colombian military personnel, there is also a growing dislike for Uribe, who turned the army into a criminal organisation during the dirty war with the guerrillas.

And the main question is for the presidential election on May 29, 2022. Despite the fact that eight candidates are registered for them, in reality there are two of them: Gustavo Petro, a representative of the Historical Alliance and Progressive Forces, and Federico Gutierrez, a candidate of the Team for Colombia, or rather oligarchy and Uribism. Never before in the country's history has the Colombian left been so close to victory.

Gustavo Petro, a 62-year-old economist, was mayor of the capital Bogota from 2012-2015, has already run for president twice (in 2010 and 2018), and is currently a senator.

At the age of 17, Petro, as a student, joined the left-wing partisan group “Movement” on April 19 (M-19), which emerged in protest against electoral fraud. He was an urban partisan and an important political leader of the movement. In 1985, he was arrested for illegal possession of weapons and sentenced to 18 months. After the armed seizure of the Palace of Justice in Bogota by members of M-19, he used his influence to negotiate peace with the government and was one of the initiators of the cessation of armed struggle and the disarmament of M-19 in 1990. After the amnesty, he participated in the formation of the political party Democratic Alliance M-19 (AD M-19).

After that, he studied at the Faculty of Economics of the Universidad Externado de Colombia, then studied public administration at the Graduate School of Public Administration. He studied at the Pontifical University of Bogota, where he received a Master's degree in Economics. He continued his studies in Belgium at the Catholic University of Leuven and the University of Salamanca in Spain. He is a left-wing Catholic, a follower of the ideas of Liberation Theology, which consist in the need for unity between Christians and Marxists.

In 2010, Petro was a candidate in the presidential election, where he received 9% of the vote and finished fourth. In 2011, Petro was elected mayor of Bogota for a three-year term from 2012 to 2015. But in December 2013, the Attorney General of Colombia decided to dismiss him, due to the decision of Mayor Petro to deprive private firms of the right to remove garbage. It was an obvious political decision.

Despite the fact that he left the Mayor's office in March 2014, on April 23, President Juan Manuel Santos, by order of the court and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, reinstated him as mayor.

As mayor, he banned the carrying of guns in the Colombian capital, and this – along with a number of social policies – has reduced the murder rate to the lowest in two decades. He also introduced a series of measures to rehabilitate drug addicts and combat global warming, but his plans to build a metro in the Colombian capital were canceled by his successor, Enrique Penalosa.

In March 2018, Petro became a candidate for the presidential election from the “Human Colombia” bloc. In the first round, he received 25% of the vote and advanced to the second round, where he received 42% of the vote and lost to the right-wing candidate Ivan Duka, the current president of the country. If Petro had succeeded in becoming president at that time, the peace treaty between FARC and the government, the implementation of which was openly disrupted by Ivan Duka, would have been saved.

These are the main elements of the Gustavo Petro government's program:

- Transformation of healthcare and education, which have now become private businesses, into universal civil law. Creation of a nationwide free and publicly accessible system of medicine, with special attention to preventive preventive measures. The need for free, publicly accessible, and high-quality public education.

- State support and benefits for small and medium-sized businesses. State support to farmers in order to achieve food sovereignty, as one of the priorities of domestic policy.

- Search for and develop new scientific and technological achievements to put them at the service of social progress and social development.

- Combat the effects of global climate change, protect ecosystems and prioritise the development of clean technologies.

- Construction of the Bogota metro and commuter train network around the capital.

- Tougher criminal prosecution for corruption.

- Participation of civil society organisations and representatives in the government, constant feedback and support for civil initiatives. Ending political persecution in the country and investigating political crimes.

- Protection of motherhood and childhood.

- Continuation of the peace process and implementation of all the commitments signed by the Colombian state.

Francia Marquez, a well-known human rights activist and environmentalist with the title of lawyer, will become vice president in the Petro government. Francia is a representative of the Afro-Colombian part of the population. In recent years, she has fought against illegal mining operations controlled by far-right militants and political elites, and has received numerous death threats.

In the eyes of many Colombians, she is a symbol of the most discriminated part of the country – a black woman from a poor family and a social leader. Human sympathy for her is very high, and this will probably be reflected in the results of voting. On the other hand, it should be taken into account that despite all Francia's sincerity, her political experience is extremely organic and the obvious lack of general education cannot but lead to serious problems and political mistakes, especially in the fight against such a strong and experienced opponent.

The main and only real opponent of Gustavo Petro in this election is the representative of Uribism, a construction engineer and former mayor of the country's second city Medellin (2016-2019), 47-year-old Federico Gutierrez. Gutierrez represents not just the right-wing forces, but the most radical part of them, striving to protect the oligarchic system without any concessions to society, the physical destruction of dissenters, the refusal to implement the peace treaty with FARC and a complete foreign policy orientation towards the United States. The political forces of most evangelical churches have already declared their support for his candidacy.

The Department of Colombia, which is represented by Gutierrez – Antioquia, is interesting and revealing. Antioquia is the most economically privileged part of the country, and its capital Medellin is the richest city in Colombia, a historical centre of racism, oligarchy, drug trafficking and paramilitarism, which was born precisely here.

Part of the local mentality is extreme conservatism, double standards and the most gracious of masks for tourists and investors. It was Antioquia's entrepreneurs who took over most of the country's economy and became the main link between the outside globalised world and Colombia, becoming the main representatives of banks and corporations.

It is logical and significant that one of the most terrifying characters in recent Colombian history, Pablo Escobar, was from Medellin. At the same time, Antioquia was for a long time one of the main centres of guerrilla warfare and today faces one of the highest rates of everyday murders of social leaders. Alvaro Uribe - “Butcher”/Matarife - is one of the brightest representatives of this Medellin oligarchic culture and Federico Gutierrez is a political product of this particular story.

Gutierrez's government program focuses on fighting crime and corruption, strengthening law enforcement agencies and expanding their powers, building roads, creating new business opportunities, fighting state bureaucracy, guaranteeing three free meals a day for the poorest, cash subsidies for families below the poverty line, building housing, providing water, sewerage and other services. the Internet is used by residents of areas deprived of the basic benefits of civilisation, and all this while fully preserving the current economic and political system.

The names of the parties and coalitions of the two opposing sides are interesting: Petro - the “Humane Colombia” party as part of the “Historical Pact”, and Gutierrez – the “Democratic Centre” party (extremely undemocratic and completely far-right) within the bloc with the populist football name "Team for Colombia".

According to the average results of many recent polls, in the first round of the presidential election, which will be held on May 29, Gustavo Petro should win about 37% of the vote, which is 10% higher than two months ago. At the same time, Federico Gutierrez is gaining about 19% and his level of support is also growing rapidly. In third place – "blank ballot"; undetermined or undecided, but 16% of respondents these days are against all.

There are often many gross inaccuracies in many external assessments of the balance of political forces in Colombia. So many right-wing politicians, like Sergio Fajardo, are presented as “left-wing" or "centre-left" candidates, who at the last moment "refuse to unite progressive forces", condemning these forces to another loss.

In fact, the following is happening (and this trend is not only Colombian, but generally Latin American): the majority of the population is rather poorly educated, apolitical and easily manipulated by the authorities, who retain control over the media. Most traditional right-wing parties are associated in the minds of people with economic elites and corruption, and therefore are too odious and cannot ensure electoral victory for any of the candidates.

Therefore, many "new" parties and movements with "progressive" names have emerged, positioning themselves as "centre" or "left centre" or "democratic left", including a fashionable human rights or environmental agenda, but always taking the side of the oligarchy and political elites in real political processes. This often leads to even greater disorientation and depoliticisation of the population.

At the same time, it is interesting that some traditional conservatives from traditional right-wing political parties often behave more progressive and honest than representatives of these "new leftists". For example, the figure of Humberto de la Calle, a traditional right-wing politician, a representative of educated aristocratic elites, is very interesting. He was the head of a government delegation to negotiate peace with FARC. Today, he is one of the most consistent fighters in the country for peace and necessary social reforms, and is highly respected by various political camps.

Given the above and the political results of the senate elections, despite all the successes of the left, Petro has no chance of winning in the first round of the presidential race, where it is necessary to get more than 50% of the vote. This is possible only with the participation of the currently active part of the electorate. It is obvious that most pseudo-centrists and pseudo-leftists will support Uribism in order to block any possibility of major changes. Before the second round, it is logical to expect the majority of political forces to unite around the candidacy of Federico Gutierrez.

But in the recent congressional elections, which allow us to make these political projections, just over 47% of the electorate participated. If progressive forces manage to convince the politically passive part of the population before the first or at least the second round (as recently in Chile, before the election of Gabriel Boric, who is politically close to Gustavo Petro), to support their candidacy, victory is quite real.

That is why now the right-wing press of Colombia (and there is practically no other alternative press in the country) is trying to create a hat-raising mood among the left and the illusion of an easy victory in the first round, while Gutierrez is rapidly increasing the level of support and new forces and characters are being connected to the propaganda of his candidacy.

Today, nothing is a foregone conclusion, but the left really has the biggest chance in the history of Colombia to win an election.

What changes could Petro's victory in the elections lead to in the most ideal scenario of his government's success?

The poverty rate would be reduced, and more Colombians would have more social protection and a better chance of getting a full education. Crime and violence would decrease in society, mass killings of public leaders would stop, the mechanisms of the peace process of the FARC treaty would start working, and farmers would have a chance to live not by growing coca leaves.

In other words, the real project of the Petro government is rather a social-democratic one, which should soften the current model, but not radically change it. Of course, we are not talking about any kind of socialist revolution. And it is unlikely that Colombia would be able to end its dependence on the United States only as a result of Petro's victory.

There would certainly be improvements in relations with Russia. If the current Uribist government was the first and one of the few in Latin America to join the anti-Russian sanctions, the Petro government - unequivocally condemning any war as a way to resolve conflicts (and this is especially clear from the Colombian experience), in all likelihood would have abandoned the sanctions policy and sought mutually beneficial ties, as its ideologically close colleagues do in the region - from Mexico to Bolivia, Argentina and Chile.

And the only way to free Colombia from dependence on the United States in the coming years is possible, perhaps, only if the United States continues to weaken its economic capabilities and its ability to finance the Colombian military machine on the one hand, and Colombia's economic ties with China grow on the other.