War aniversay and the seeking of Peace

Este artículo en español

The last cycle of the Colombian war, after the terrible Violence of years 40 and 50, began forty years ago if we took like reference the birth from the revolutionary guerrillas, the FARC, ELN and EPL in 1964. Two generations of Colombians we have grown in the middle of the armed conflict, three, if we left from the origins of the Violence for 1946 with the preservative government of Ospina Perez.

This is as much as to say that we already had been almost 60 years without periods of peace. What one appears to us in history like a peace accord, the pact of the National Front between the heads of the traditional parties to finish with the Violence, was not more than the confirmation of the political and social exclusion of the great majorities like governability model and this is precisely why the seed of the war of following the four decades. The single obtaining of the right to the vote by the women in the plebiscito of 1957 that it looked for to legitimize the regime bipartisan, did not reach to cover the reality of the pact with pardon and forgetfulness, impunity and the historical amnesia autodecretadas by the people in charge of the almost 300mil massacre of Colombians. La Paz without truth, justice and repair does not reconcile, sowing new violences.

Towards 80 years the dynamics of the war had been harnessed by the urban action and the political proposals of the M19. And the answer of the State, of the hand of the doctrine of the taught National Security to our Armed Forces by the North Americans in the School of the Américas, was the repression, not only the legitim against the groups armed of opposition, but the restoration of a Statute of Security that it placed to the civil populace like the enemy, victim of the tortures, murders, disappearances, the persecution to the political opposition and the criminalization of the social protest. The violation to the Human rights was instituted like policy of State with which this one deepened its unlegitimancy.

In 1982 the cycle of the peace processes is opened. The general Amnesty of November of that year, the company/signature in agreements of Truce between the insurgent government of Betancur and some groups and the political dialogue called National Dialogue inaugurate a new scene of politicalization of the war in which, while this one is deepened, it begins to speak of objective causes, are made peace conversations and it settles down a climate of participation of sectors of the society in the construction of agendas and proposals for a possible Peace accord.

Nevertheless at the same time of this politicalization, a process of degradation of the war with the appearance of the paramilitarismo is generated that victimiza to the civil populace with a series of continued massacres. The paramilitarismo is the expression of the reaction of landowners, political and military narcotics traffickers and sectors to the political opening and the institutional changes that entailed those processes of peace. For that reason that political opening finishes bathed in blood with the genocide against the Patriotic Union and the desvertebramiento to blood and fire of the social and popular movement that came in ascent at the beginning of the decade. The forced displacement is an expression of that violence against the civil populace that at the same time guarantees the interests of its promoters in an agrarian reform against the poor farmers, the black natives and communities. In the end, the irrationality of the war prevails against the option of the policy and in the adventure of the Palace of Justice they are burned, not only the illusions of the National Dialogue but the faith in the Colombian Democracy and its centennial institutions.

The Constitution of 1991 prevails then like the necessity of a new social contract, the opening of a new process of political modernization decided by an ample range of political and social sectors that, nevertheless, in spite of being presented like a pact of peace, "the navigation chart of the country for century XXI", does not manage to arouse the participation of all the insurgency. But in fact, around the Constitution of 1991, its construction and implementation, government and insurgency are developed to a series in Peace accords between who are translated close in the demobilization of five guerrilla detachments with 4000 combatants. Like at the end of 1953, the rows of guerrillas doing carelessness of the arms like a peace commitment and the hope of a true reconciliation are seen again.

And like in 1953, those hopes are frustrated. In spite of its garantista character of rights, of participativa democracy, modernization of justice, the Constitution of 1991 is born larvada of social inequality in the middle of the neoliberal opening, is born instrumentalizada by the Gaviria government like a weapon military. Symbol of it is the bombing to the campings of the guerrilla the same day of the elections for the Constituent Assembly and the declaration of the Integral War only two years after the proclamation of the new Constitution presented/displayed like a pact of integral peace. Also the murder, like in 1953, of the signatory guerrilla leaders in the peace accords and, since then to today, near thousands reinsertados, 25% of the demobilized force. Evidently for the Colombian oligarchy the pacts of peace have been instruments of their strategy military. For that reason it does not look for the reconciliation through deep economic and social reforms but the surrender and the submission his excluding project.

The guerrilla insurgency, on the other hand, did not know to interpret the changes in the international context of aims of the 80 nor demographic and political transformations that took to ample sectors of the Colombian society to reject the war and its manifestations and to the exigency of La Paz with social justice. Neither it was possible to be removed of the degradation of many actions military nor of the option by military sorties when political exits were required. Of there its progressive isolation of the national opinion, much more when the negotiations of peace of end of the 90 finished in a new collective frustration.

Only the presence of a deeply civilist social movement, jeopardizes with the search of negotiated La Paz, the defense of the Human rights and of the Humanitarian Right, with the aspiration to a society with social justice, the defense of the Constitution of 1991 and its elements of institutional modernization, garantismo of rights and citizen participation, only the insurgency of a democratic civil society, activates in the construction of La Paz from the regional premises and, signs in the political and ideological confrontation with the forces of the war and the reaction, plural manifold and in the social, coherent mobilization in the ethical proposal of reconciliation on the base of the truth, justice and solidarity, have the legitimacy to represent in the Colombia of today the forces of the progress.

In its ten years of work, Redepaz has been part and has contributed to the construction of that current of future without which neither La Paz, nor justice, nor the democracy will be in fact the standards of the new Colombia