Real Peace is Still FARC, FARC Away
A 52 year war ends in Colombia, but there’s still more work to be done.
From their first day playing the game, all basketball players are told one thing: don’t ever look down. As a point guard, a floor general, you’re told to keep your head up, surveying the court for cutters and open shooters. After all, there’s no points to be scored by looking at your feet. “Down” is where the pesky hands are to steal the ball. “Down” is where you miss the guy charging behind you to block your shot. Basketball players should always look east, west, and even north on occasion. But never south.
Unfortunately, it seems as if our sympathies, our fears, and our priorities across the globe are governed by the same rules as basketball. Our news cycle is chalk full of ISIS atrocities, the war in Syria, terror attacks in Europe, as if all assailants come from the East. Yet we frequently omit stories about the depraved drug cartels, who are just as, if not more, brutal than ISIS. Moving further south, we find one of the most bloodthirsty conflicts of the modern era, thriving in relative anonymity. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, more commonly known as FARC, clashed with the Colombian government for over half a century, claiming 220,000 lives and displacing millions more. Finally, the carnage could come to an end; the government and FARC, after years of negotiations, agreed to a peace deal.
What are the key elements of the deal? First and most importantly, FARC will morph into an actual political party instead of a violent fringe group; they will be given 10 seats in Colombian congress until 2026. One of the more controversial measures was a blanket amnesty given to guerrilla grunts, who could have their crimes pardoned as long as they were limited to “rebellion”. Senior members accused of more heinous crimes could also escape prison by disclosing their role and paying reparations. Also, FARC rebels feared that laying down their weapons could leave them vulnerable to attack from other enemies, and thus the government provided them with military protection.
The deal isn’t out of the woods yet, unfortunately, as it first has to make it past the common will. A referendum on the bill is being held on October 2nd, and just like anywhere else in the world, the politics could become problematic. The deal is opposed by president Juan Manuel Santos’s political nemesis: Alvaro Uribe. Uribe, a former president, notes that the deal is “too soft” towards FARC. In relation to the deal, this man is dangerous. He can’t do anything himself, but he is hauntingly charismatic and his supporters remember his time in office a little too fondly. Uribe’s time in office was mired with scandals, especially ones concerning the war on FARC. His supporters in the government were indicted for cooperating with the AUC, an anti-FARC paramilitary group accused of horrendous war crimes; wiretapping opposition leaders and even Supreme Court justices; and most egregiously of all, luring mentally ill civilians to remote areas, killing them, and claiming they were rebels to inflate the FARC body count. Despite the countless human rights violations Uribe’s government committed, he was still mindbogglingly popular: he had a 69.3% evaluation of performance rating during his tenure.
How? Why? Uribe is a monster. Surely everyone should hate him, yet there is a method to this madness. Juliana Baena of Scripps College contends that Uribe retained his popularity because the human rights violations did not affect the upper class, in fact, it most likely benefited them. They did succeed, “ in delivering stability to Colombia’s middle and upper-classes, while further marginalizing the lower class,”. This is key, because who’s going to be voting in the elections? The upper class. Who has the ability to intimidate voters at the polls? The upper class. Uribe was able to grab the hearts of the wealthy a decade ago with his chauvinistic displays, and in a Colombia where Juan Manuel Santos is becoming increasingly unpopular, and the rich see the far left gaining political influence in congress, he won’t have a hard time. Current polls show a large lead for the “Yes” campaign on the peace deal, but A) polls don’t reflect the voter suppression that could very well occur at the ballot box and B) Uribe still has more than a month to appeal to a frustrated and antsy upper class.
However, the largest problem with the rich in this political quagmire will be how they respond to the left. Violence against peaceful Marxists and socialists has existed for decades already. 105 leftist activists were killed last year, a stark rise of 35% from the previous year, and this was without the tensions that we see today between the left and right. Although the government did give former members of FARC “temporary normalization hamlets” which no Colombian troops are allowed within a mile of, the left is still not fully respected or protected. First, that zone does not include ultra-nationalist citizens who realized that FARC members have no guns to defend themselves. Second, it does not protect members of the nonviolent left, who are bound to face even more violence and hatred than they did last year. FARC exists because their members believe that they only way to promote socialism is with a gun, and these attacks only legitimize their cause.
Unfortunately, none of the previous statements are speculation, as politicizing FARC has occurred before, and it ended in a bloodbath. In 1992, FARC laid down their weapons and formed a political party called La Unión Patriótica (the Patriotic Union). Within months, government forces killed hundreds of their supporters and activists and even two presidential nominees. FARC has dropped its guns before, and it resulted in violence. The government won’t assault the left itself, but it’s not a stretch to assume that leftists will be shamed, harassed, intimidated, or even killed, everywhere they go.
Greek mythology spoke of the hydra: a beast who when beheaded, grew two in its place. The hydra mentality is ubiquitous among guerrilla groups (see Al-Qaeda and the Viet Cong) and FARC is no exception. Not all members of FARC will submit to the peace deal entirely; remember, they get to be private citizens who can still make their own life choices. Even if FARC is dismantled, there are still alternatives for those who don’t wish to go native. One is the National Liberation Army, or ELN. They aren’t as powerful as FARC once was but they still provide an alternative for anyone too disillusioned to participate in Colombian politics. Furthermore, the government, thus far, has not shown a willingness to negotiate with the ELN. Senior FARC members who aren’t happy with the deal could feasibly join ELN, bolstering the guerrilla attacks they are already committing. Not only is that a continuation of violence, but it’s disastrous for the popularity of the peace deal. Now, in the eyes of citizens, terrorists are getting off scot-free and the attacks don’t even stop. People aren’t going to vote for a deal that pardons the enemy while the enemy still lurks on their doorstep. It’s likely that ELN increases its offensives to fill the void that FARC left behind, furthering damaging support for the deal. This is all dependent on the voters, and the ELN certainly isn’t doing them any favors.
Although the path to a “Yes” on the referendum is possible, it can still be vanquished up by the thunderstorm of Uribe and his supporters, and it is becoming more and more likely that this will happen. All year, we’ve bet against the power of ultra-nationalism: we doubted Trump, we doubted the Brexit, and we doubted the rise of the Polish government. These scenarios are undoubtedly different from Colombia, but the core principles are the same; don’t awake the sleeping beast of the far-right. Uribe currently holds the alarm clock, and the FARC peace deal could finally push the hands towards wake-up-time.
Regardless of what the ELN does, it will be temporary. They are a shadow of FARC and can’t sustain an offensive as long as their predecessors did. Santos will eventually negotiate with them, and they will die off as well. FARC laying down its weapons would be momentous; it would be the end of the longest armed conflict in Latin America. Thousands of people wouldn’t have to fear that their homes could be burned down or looted, wouldn’t have to fear death or rape at the hands of either FARC or the government, and they could finally start a new, safe chapter in their lives. Yet, FARC’s concerns about the state of Colombian society are fully warranted. 0.4% of the population owns 64% of the arable land, and the World Bank ranks Colombia as a top ten most unequal nation in the world. The corporation Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris released a report showing violent paramilitaries like the aformentioned AUS had influenced the 2002 and 2006 presidential elections. The groups have politicians in their pockets. Human rights violations are practically interwoven into the very being of the Colombian congress. Think Super PACs, if Super PACs were owned by the mob, and the mob was an army of degenerates that slaughtered women and children for fun. Organized crime practically owns the Colombian government, and giving FARC a secure political voice is key to lessening the inequality and corruption that exists within it. You don’t have to be a Marxist to agree with their critique of the bureaucracy. Peace is an important step to correcting that.
Hollywood tries so hard to create effective political and social commentary, and more often than not, it falls flat on its face (see the Purge films). The best I’ve seen so far was done in just two lines in the film Sicario, about an FBI agent who joins an elite task force to take down the leader of a drug cartel. After an extremely tense shootout on the border with the cartel, one of the soldiers remarks, “This will be on the front page of every newspaper in America,” to which his comrade, chuckling, responds, “No, this won’t even make it to the front page in El Paso,”. The American consciousness is constantly diverted from our Southern neighbors, so much so that we have quite literally forgotten about a war almost as large as the one in Syria. A FARC peace deal would bring an end to seemingly endless carnage, and signal the first step to terminating the absurd inequities present in Colombia. Basketball coaches everywhere might riot, but maybe, just maybe, we as a nation just need to look down.
