Category: Colombia

Review of “The FARC: The Longest Insurgency”

Written by an investigative journalist who’s spent decades with the FARC, including some times as their captive, Gary Leech’s book The FARC: The Longest Insurgency presents the largest and oldest Marxist-Leninist insurgency movement in North America. They are, I believe, second only in size in the world to the Naxalite movement in India. FARC-EP, the group’s official name, stands for Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army.

The origins of the group stemmed from the country’s gross economic inequality and lack of access campesinos had to fertile land. Since Independence, the descendants of the Spaniard ruling class used their access to capital and arms to dispossess indigenous peoples and peasants of their land. Purchasing foreign made goods and directing the state to invest more in men to protect private property than democratic institutions, uneven development transpired in a way that put the people at odds with the State. Inspired by the revolutionary movements in Latin American and abroad that followed the Second World War, the group started advocating and fighting on behalf of the agricultural workers.

The beginning of cocaine production in the Southern/Putumayo region in the 80s gave the organization a new influx of money. Such an influx of money wasn’t without additional problems – as narco-traffickers started buying large tracts of land and dispossessing others until they became the largest class of landowners in the country conflict between the two groups became inevitable. As the Medellin cartel had greater access to capital, they were dominated them though reached a modicum of peace as they needed to redirect their forces to fight the Cali Cartel, which had allied itself with the DEA and the Colombian Government. While reading I was bemused, though not surprised, that the growers in the region under the control of the FARC consistently made more money from their coca crops than did those under the control of the Cartels.

In discussing the issue of human rights as it relates to the FARC, Leech presents a view that is nuanced, yet does not get bogged down in the details. He shows how it conceives of itself, an alternative to the official state that functions as a judiciary and sponsor of economic development in the areas it controls. While he does find some faults with it, compared to the official Colombian state as well as its paramilitary apparatus it is adjudged as the superior adherent to human rights. It’s this and the long history of the organization which ought to justify the categorization of the guerillas as combatants rather than narco-terrorists or, alternately, just terrorists.

 

 

 

Leech addresses a number of the reasons why, despite their clearly not being as responsible for reprehensible acts of terroristic violence against civilian populations as right-wing paramilitaries, they are vilified. For one there is Colombia’s long history of violence against and assassinations of leftists. Such campaigns were not limited only to guerillas but also those journalists who brought greater clarity and context to the stakes of the violence in their writings. Operating under the dialectics of suspicion, those that were considered sympathizers were equated with the actual combatants and seen as fair game for AUC and others. Secondarily, as a covert organization it is difficult to hold press conferences and talk with reporters that are already wary of being seen as sympathetic to the FARC. As a result many reporters fail to investigate the veracity of the press conference spectacles held by the military. Third, the news largely reflects the political interests of the owners. Stories published and broadcast highlight the kidnappings by the FARC for ransom, conceived of as a just response to non-payment of taxes, and typically ignore those narratives about human displacement caused by corporately funded paramilitary operations. Thus the stories of rich people being kidnapped, an act which at it’s height peaked around the 1,200 mark and has since decreased to around the 100s, silences the between 3.2 and 4.9 million people that have been forced to relocate due to violence.

The relationship between the FARC and the Government as well as the United States role in providing assistance to the latter is another area the Leech extensively reports upon. Since the passage of Plan Colombia in 1998, which made the country the second largest recipient of U.S. aide, casualties have mounted and the FARC has lost much of it’s territory. As far as I’m aware the La Gabarra, False-Positives and other scandals that illustrate the depth of cruelty of the Uribe government haven’t made the news, though high profile scandals, such as the kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt and U.S. missionaries have despite the former issues being bloodier.

In his conclusion Leech is not hopeful that there will be peace anytime soon between the AUC, the FARC and the Government as the government has consistently pursued neo-liberal policies and made these exempt from negotiations during their peace accords. Since the conditions that lead to the FARC in the first place aren’t dealt with and the Colombian and U.S. government have made liability for engagement in civilian dispossessions and massacres to protect corporate profits, any future peace is likely not to be long-lasting.

Review of "Dependency and Development in Latin America"

Dependency and Development in Latin America is former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto’s historical materialist account of the preconditions and conditions of economic development in Latin America. The preface and introduction flatly rejects a narrow empiricism and particularism and instead adopts a holistic, dialectical, historical-structural approach.

As subsequent historiography illustrates, the forms taken on by a dependency varied considerably based upon the social-political context, the goods available for export and the level of capital investment and social infrastructure required to extract them, the political capacity following the cessation of the war for independence as well as more mundane concerns such as terrain and communications capacity. Despite the centers incapacity to operate as the political power within the periphery, still exercised immense control as their productive capacities were in essence enclave economies. Put another way, peripheral economies were still dependent upon their former colonial masters to take in their exports, which was predominantly raw materials. Because their capital goods sector wasn’t usually not quantitatively large enough and they lacked a domestic market, the importation of capital intensive, manufactured goods continued. This coincidence of interests meant that in many ways that thought the wars of independence had been fought and won such that they were no longer under the thumb of the Iberian peninsula, the same manner of control was and dependence existed.

Dependent economies were at an additional disadvantage as the banking system had previously been administered by ejected colonial groups, making potential colonial capitalists at another disadvantage. Lacking access to European markets, reliant upon foreign bankers, unable to profitably exploit their own domestic market, accelerated urbanization with concomitant expectations for political liberalism and with a ruling class that often idealized and sought to imitate their former oppressors combined to create the conditions for social conflict. In the emphasis on the materiality of the countries in question, Cardoso seeks to undermine the facile notions proffered by modernization theorists such as W. W. Rostow which hold that the imposition of universalistic economic qualities on an economy can create development.

At such a point it’s worth noting that Cardoso highlights at several points the role of the bureaucracy. It’s various incarnations are worth discussing as a counterfactual to modernization theory’s economic “bridging” and as shortly following the books release the epoch of bureaucratic authoritarian regimes began. History illustrates that it is possible for a society to go through profound alterations in its system of production with the formation of a center for bureaucratic decision making. The creation of a “political sphere”, concomitant social institutions and the composition of character implies a level of complexity not alway existent. Following the nascent struggles, they are either able to serve their creator’s interests, the dominant route, act to benefit some lower class groups goals of (predominantly socialist or communist) development or able to blend the two within a nationalist sentiment. The various powers within this are tied to the level of capital development, however was already mentioned above in relation to the enclave economy of dependent countries, it is not just that there are times when large land-holders and domestic capitalists have an interest in policies that prioritize their maintenance of existing social relations despite the fact that a marginal adjustment might spark internal capitalist development – but that this is the default state of affairs.

The historical analysis which follows and provides examples of this is, as a relative neophyte to Latin American politics, admittedly beyond my scope. However I would not that Marjory Urquidi’s review of the book in The Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 60 No 1, noted that while aspects of it could be problematized it was largely lacking any major flaws. What I am able to comment on is Kenneth Robbert’s quick dismissal of the purported datedness of Cardoso’s “socialist” language. From the previous analysis, and tellingly written at the beginning the “lost decade”, it is clear that given the capacity of the upper class to deal with financial burdens that it’s better in the long run for them to assist workers rather than resist their demands. Class conflict, like welfare and job training programs, both cost money but only one of them assists the capitalists once the opportunity presents itself.