Opinion Sur Joven

Imagine you are in the middle of a dream, not an unforgettable or memorable one, but a dream like any other, which is interrupted by a resonant booom! Then you feel your bed moves subtly and the windows vibrate, so you think the loud noise you heard was a thunder announcing rain. You open your eyes and are surprised to find a sunny day, with the blue sky slipping through the curtains; suddenly, confusion grows when you hear quick steps on the hallway, doors opening and closing, voices outside your apartment, radios turning on or tuning the news. So you decide to get up looking for your mom or your dad; if you can find them both, much better.

The next thing you remember is someone saying “They’ve blown the D.A.S.!”, and the phrase starts being echoed by multiple voices crowding into a hallway with enormous windows on the thirteenth floor, from where you can see -not so far away- a cloud of smoke with some flames emerging from time to time.

Your next worrying memory is the image of your mother looking for coins to use the phone on the ground floor. That’s how on December 6, 1989, you -at eight and not knowing what the DAS is- discover that the thing that has just exploded is a building near your grandfather’s workplace.

Quietness appears among the sirens of the fire trucks and the ambulances you see through the window, just as your mom finally confirms your grandfather is okay. So the only thing left to do now is to wait for the casualties report on the news and go back to everyday life, knowing almost for sure that your life might end at a bombing at any moment.

The situation described above is a personal memory, shared with the Colombians who have lived -or survived- the eighties and nineties. And it’s not very different from those lived by previous and subsequent generations, due to an undeclared domestic armed conflict that has lasted for more than fifty years, raised and worsened by economic and political interests. It has left a scar on several generations who, surrounded by death, open a space for life.

To dive into the problematic, let’s start by explaining that Colombia is located on the northern region of South America. Its shores are surrounded by two oceans: to the north, by the Atlantic Ocean; to the west, by the Pacific one. Since it’s located on the equator, there are no seasons and temperature is regulated by altitude: there’s a permanent snowline on the Andes, whereas beaches endure more than 100 degrees.

To the south of the territory, the Andes divide into three sections; this allows the generation of multiple ecosystems, some of which are unique, such as the paramos, in contrast with the deserts; the cold mountains also contrast with the warm eastern plateaus, the exuberant rainforests and the Caribbean coasts and islands…

During the 20th century, the economy was sustained by agricultural products such as tobacco and coffee, and mining resources such as oil, emeralds and gold. However, due to the migratory process of the last years caused by economic and social insecurity, remittances started to hold the first position of economy. The world also knows Colombia for the production and trade of marihuana and cocaine, a significant source for illegal economy, evident violence and political processes.

Notwithstanding the natural resources, the country also has several armed groups: left-wing guerrillas, paramilitary groups, an army with serious corruption issues inside, and now seven American military bases.

The history begins

The bombing at the Administrative Department of Security (D.A.S.) on December 6, 1989, wasn’t an isolated incident but the expression of a social conflict that had been developing for more than two decades and had several sides. For the sake of clarity and a better understanding of the yet unresolved conflict plot, let’s describe one of the first actors of the struggle: the FARC.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People’s Army (FARC-EP) resulted from the combination of the process some historians have defined as “bipartisan political violence” [1], from the struggle for the land in a country that would then base its economy on agriculture and from the implementation and the assimilation of communism in Latin America.

According to the book “Violencia Política en Colombia. De la nación fragmentada a la construcción del Estado” (Political Violence in Colombia. From a Fragmented Nation to the Creation of the State) [2], several authors identify the origins of the FARC with mid-century violent events and farmers’ self-defense forces formed during those years among regions with political and social influences of the Communist Party. They appeared under the name FARC in 1966, alter the military attack against the so-called independent republics.

The independent republics were settlements of farmers who lived in the areas of the central, western and eastern Andes; they resulted from the bipartisan violence occurred between 1949 and 1953, but continued to exist even after the coalition agreement between the liberal and conservative parties held between 1958 and 1974. Both parties had agreed upon government alternation, and said coalition was called Frente Nacional (National Front).

Some of the liberal guerrillas adopted the ideas of the Communism that was landing up in Latin America. After the fall of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla’s military government -which led to the creation of the National Front and the demobilization of the remaining guerrillas-, the communists of south Tolima refused to surrender their weapons. Together with their leader, Charronegro (Jacobo Prías Alape), they knew they would soon need those weapons to defend themselves from the surrounding communists. [3]

Some sectors opposed to the government considered these settlements to be a danger for national sovereignty, and that’s how conservative politician Alvaro Gómez Hurtado expressed it in his speech before the Senate on November 29, 1961.

“[…] this country has a series of independent republics which do not acknowledge the sovereignty of the Colombian State, where the Colombian army may not enter; where it is told its presence is disastrous, that is scares the people or the inhabitants away […] There is the independent republic of Sumapaz […], of Planadas […], of Río Chiquito […], and now we are witnessing the birth of a new independent republic of Vilchada; the national sovereignty is shrinking as a handkerchief”.

According to Henderson, Alvaro Gómez’s speech was timely because he made it two days before Fidel Castro openly embraced Marxism-Leninism, ten days before Colombia severed relations with Cuba and two weeks before John F. Kennedy’s visit.

Alvaro Gómez’s words generated reactions in the government, to the point a military action was planned for the following year against the small enclave in Planadas. The action was never implemented, and no one knows the reasons why the mission was suspended. However, two years later, in May 1964, Marquetalia was bombed; it was an enclave in southern Planadas, where Charronegro was settled, and it enabled communication with the Río Chiquito enclave.

The survivors of this attack created an armed group, which at first were farmers’ self-defense forces: in 1966 they were introduced as F.A.R.C.

Throughout a long period -more than fifty years- of transformation of the country, this armed group has survived and gone through qualitative and quantitative changes: the number of armed members has increased; they’ve become involved in drug dealing, land occupation, political and military control in some isolated regions; their leaders and their political direction have changed; other guerrillas appeared; they’ve attempted three peace agreements; paramilitary groups, among others, have appeared… However, just like in May 1964 or December 1989, Colombians’ dreams might be interrupted by the sound of a bomb. That’s what we will be talking about in the next issue of Opinión Sur Joven.

Illustration: Guadalupe Giani

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