The Congo Conflict

http://www.zcommunications.org/the-congo-conflict-by-justin-podur

Reviewing

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja. The Congo From Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History. Zed Books, London, 2002. Nzongola-Ntalaja was interviewed in preparation for the review on Jan 29, 2004.

John F. Clark. The African Stakes of the Congo War. Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2002.

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A Living Process: Justin Podur interviews Padre Antonio Bonanomi

Padre Antonio Bonanomi has been part of the movement in Northern Cauca since the 1980s. The role of the mission in Toribio was crucial since Alvaro Ulcue’s arrival and strengthening of CRIC even earlier. As an outsider, from Italy, who has been in the community for decades and shared its problems, Bonanomi brings a unique perspective to the movement.
JP: How and when did you get here?

AB: I came officially at the beginning of 1988, but I had passed through before. I got here and saw a process already underway. It started in 1980 and was already 8 years old. Alvaro Ulcue had already been dead for 4 years. At the time, they were evaluating Proyecto Nasa. Some of the advisors who had been here from the start came to do a long evaluation. I was able to attend this, and through this, I was able to understand a lot about where the process was and where it was going.

I came here with a lot of ideas. It is one thing to see and hear about it from Bogota, but it is another to see it here, its life and voice. At the time, the group here at the mission still played a central role. One of the sisters was the secretary, another the treasurer. After the evaluation, I saw the need for some new lines of work.

First, we needed to build capacity in the community to lead the process.

Second, we needed to revive some of the nearly-dead programs: the youth, the women’s program, they had suffered after Alvaro Ulcue’s death and were necessary to revive the community.

Third, we needed to take the project beyond Toribio.

Since 1990, the growth of the project to other spaces really began. In 1987, Jambalo began its ‘Proyecto Global’. In 1990, there were two more: ‘Proyecto Unidad Paez’ in Miranda, and ‘Proyecto Integral’ in Caloto. In 1991, two more projects in different parts of the zone grew up. These projects continue the experience of Proyecto Nasa here, and have the same objectives, methods, and spirit.

Structurally, there were three elements. The Assemblies, the School of Community Animators, and the various Programs that took place under the overall project.

JP: Watching the assemblies work as very efficient decision-making bodies with huge numbers of people is amazing. Where does this come from?

AB: Part of it is tradition. But the methodology is newer. It comes from liberation theology of the 1960s and 1970s. The method is called ‘see, judge, and act’. It was actually grown here in Colombia. The three parts, to see, gather, analyze the situation in commissions; to judge to see if it corresponds to the overall plan; and act, to translate it into a part of the work plan. These sorts of methods are used in the consciousness-raising of Paulo Freire: creating consciousness for liberation. That’s the methodology. The tradition is that people like to meet: there have always been assemblies. But before Alvaro Ulcue brought this methodology, the assemblies were ones where one person would talk and the rest would listen.

Alvaro taught that each and every person had to learn to think, to give an opinion, to decide, and act. The assemblies are a huge part of life here. There are four major assemblies each year, at each level. That is 24 assemblies a year, each 3 days long… I used to go to them all, so I would spend 80 days of the year in assemblies!

JP: What about the school of animators?

AB: Each project needed facilitators to help people lead the process. So the facilitators were trained at this school. Many of the current indigenous governors and council members are from this process.

JP: And the programs? What are the traditions behind the ‘Planes de Vida’ (life plans)?

AB: This society, like every society, has to deal with this problem: how do you combine tradition with modernity. I don’t mean ‘modernization’, roads, and all that. I mean the positive things about modernity: changes in gender relations, ideas of individual liberty. A living society has to be able to take these things in without losing its identity. And this process has done so. This is a process, a culture, that is alive. It is flexible. So long as my body is alive, I can ingest something, assimilate it, and make it a part of me. The Nasa are the same. This is no museum! And so, it is partly tradition and partly from outside. The people always had a ‘Plan de Vida’. That is how the movement started: a declaration for territory, authority, law, spirituality, all intrinsic.

The development planning process is just a part of this. It is a small part of the overall ‘Plan de Vida’.

Education is an important program. In 1996, we started to look at how we could have university education here: perhaps a campus of another university. In 1997, an institute at the University of Medellin, began a program in social science emphasizing language and anthropology. We had our first graduating class last year. This year is the second. Many of the leaders of the process come from that program.

In 2000, we began a program of ethno-education. In 2001, we had a program in economy and agro-industry.

JP: I heard some preoccupation in the assemblies over this: elders were worried that the young people would be educated here and then leave.

AB: Opportunities are limited, and we try to give them to those who are already working for the community. At Juan Tama, one project produces 30 tonnes of trout every 3 months. This is a source of protein for the community, and it’s a source of revenue. The project was done by people trained here, and committed to creating something here.

JP: Part of the project is taking over the municipal governments to use them for the development plan. The insurgency views this as ‘collaboration’, and would say that if they are not in armed rebellion, they aren’t in rebellion at all.

AB: It is a different logic. The logic here is a search for a new way of doing politics. To transform power. The armed struggle is a search for power. The indigenous don’t want to be ordered around by anyone.

Here is an example. When the FARC ordered all municipal politicians to step down or die, many of them quit. Many of them were killed. Here in Toribio, the mayor was from the movement, Gabriel Pavi. There was an assembly, of 6000 people. He asked the community if he should quit. They said: we chose you, we oblige you to stay. Gabriel hid in Cali for a week, but after the assembly he came back. The community decides. The mayor does not exist to serve the government, but to serve the people.

Another illustration of the difference in world-view. There is a letter that the FARC published on May 28, 2001. It explicitly denounces the CRIC. We analyzed the letter very carefully. It is most expressive. For many years, the FARC loved the indigenous. Until the 1980s, before the indigenous recovered the land, it was good. Before 1980, the FARC used to want to recover the land, so they could struggle together. But after 1980, the indigenous had the land and the FARC began to act in a very authoritarian way. That is when the problem started. Before that, it was a common land struggle. When FARC took a more hierarchical line and power structure, things changed. Quintin Lame organized itself, calling M-19 for help, and were actually fighting FARC. Those years of love ended. There is an ideological and political difference.

There is a recognition by both that the state is the main enemy. The problem is that the FARC is essentially a state-in-waiting. The Nasa are not against the FARC: it is a struggle for the land, it is a struggle for autonomy, that is shared. But the logic of power, and an ideology that neglects culture or seeks to replace one state with another, isolates the indigenous. They are treated like servants, pack mules – and the saying goes that a mule is a mule whether it is carrying shit or gold. Put simply, if you are against the state, the indigenous are with you. If you want to make a new one, they are not.

JP: How has the process survived such a complicated situation?

AB: We are trying to open dialogues, within and outside the country. I realized in the 1990s that the situation was getting more complicated. Until around 1998, even, you could move around freely. But the guerrillas were growing, and then the paramilitaries appeared. This is a key corridor. The guerrilla chief has always said that they will be here as long as they exist.

Alone, we are very weak. In 1997-8, we began to work with the Afro-Colombians. This is difficult. There was a lot of mutual disrespect. It was shameful because each community believed the stereotypes about the other. It was actually easier to work with intellectuals and campesinos in the interior of the country: but this was more important. We were able to open spaces in Italy: we go each year to exchange with this ‘civil society encuentro’. All these lines are the fruit of the assemblies.

The indigenous have won some space. Baltazar Garzon, the spanish supreme court judge, was here. Proyecto Nasa won the UNDP sustainable development award. These sorts of things provide some protection. The worst part is that each side thinks we’re firmly with the other. I always say I don’t know who it is that’s going to kill me.

JP: It is a strange experience to witness all this, because on the one hand there is this amazing process. On the other there are heavily armed military police and soldiers, bombs going off. It is a liberated territory and an occupied one.

AB: The Nasa are living two processes. One is internal, built on dreams. The Nasa are always dreaming. They have workshops, projects. They believe all this will pass. Their historical experience tells them the rest will pass. We won’t pass. They say, it’s tough, but La Violencia was worse, the war of 1000 days was worse, the spanish conquest was worse. Their resistance, their patience, is in this context. I hear a bomb going off and I get stressed – they are not. Instead, they are planning: they are occupied, but they are having their development planning assemblies. For them, the conflict will pass. For me, I say – how can we have autonomy when we are occupied. They say – we act as if we are free. We are occupied. But the occupiers will eventually leave, and we will continue to plan and dream.

JP: The indigenous position is a hard one to try to explain to outsiders, in some ways especially those who are against neoliberalism, US intervention, and paramilitarism: they think FARC is simply the only answer.

AB: It is difficult for outsiders to understand. I spoke on the situation in Italy recently, and the communists were there. They couldn’t understand why the FARC were not on our side.

JP: Seeing all this in motion and comparing it to the situation in Canada, I wonder what we can learn; I wonder whether the situation is so different that there are no lessons that can be learned. You are able to compare with Italy. What do you think?

AB: There are some universals. First, if a process is not of the grassroots, it has no future. The world is full of pyramids. But pyramids are for museums. You know the ones. Egypt, Guatemala, these are museums. Well all pyramids belong in museums. A process has a future if it is of the grassroots.

Second, a process should be holistic. Not only material, not only spiritual, not only the individual, not only the community, not only tradition, or innovation. It has to be holistic, and address the needs of a whole person and a whole community.

These two are fundamental, and can serve any process. The idea of trying to construct on a culture is very limited. Cultures are always moving, renovating, changing. 16 years ago we had one culture here. Today we have another. It isn’t that the people have lost their identity. You were different when you were five years old than you are now. But you were still you. The same is true here.

The most beautiful part of a living process is that it goes on. I know personally. I used to be so important in this process: people used to ask me: ‘Padre, what do we do?’ Today they don’t ask. They say: ‘Padre, here’s what we’re doing.’

Ten Years On In Chiapas

http://www.zcommunications.org/ten-years-on-in-chiapas-by-justin-podur

January 1, 2004 will be the 10th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, Mexico. In 2004, it will be 20 years since the founding of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, or EZLN (1).

For people concerned about human rights, the 10-year long rebellion has some interesting lessons.

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Pardoning the Paramilitaries in Colombia

Colombia’s paramilitary killers were dramatically ‘pardoned’ on national television in late November, and are now in ‘negotiations’ with the government to ‘demobilize’. The Colombian army, meanwhile, no longer having to worry about the paramilitaries, is now able to focus on ambitious plans for destroying the guerrillas. Indeed, Colombia’s army commander, General Martin Orlando Carreno told the Associated Press (reported Dec. 20) that he will catch FARC’s leaders by the end of the year or resign: “They found Saddam in a hole, like a rat’ These guys are rats too, hidden away in the jungle. And we can find them’ Everything is in our favor to win this war’ We must win. There is no alternative’ It is either now or never.”

Or so the story goes. In reality, the army-backed paramilitaries have not let the phony ‘demobilization’ or ‘negotiations’ impede their work of assassination and massacre. And the government’s ‘successful’ war against the guerrillas looks more like a war against the population itself.

Pardoning the Paramilitaries

A leader in Colombia’s women’s movement organization the Organizacion Feminina Popular (OFP), Esperanza Amaris Miranda, was killed on October 16, 2003, in the city of Barrancabermeja, by paramilitaries. The OFP counted 120 assassinated in Barrancabermeja in 2003 (to November), 13 of whom were women of their own organization.

The paramilitaries have been attacking the social movements savagely since the referendum of October 25 (1) went against the government. The Human Rights Department of Colombia’s union central, the Centro Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT, who counted 58 assassinations of unionists to November), reported on October 31:

“Domingo Tovar Arrieta, member of the National Executive and Director of the Human Rights Department in the afternoon of 30 October received a telephone call to his mobile in which they said:

“YOU WILL PAY WITH YOUR LIFE FOR THE LOSS OF THE REFERENDUM”.

Over the next two weeks, the paramilitaries assassinated teacher’s unionists Pacheco Everto Fiholl (November 3) and Nubia Estela Castro (November 5), Health worker’s unionist Zuly Esther Colina Perez (November 12), unionist Mario Sierra (November 16), and severely wounded teacher’s unionist Berta Lucy Davila (November 13).

There are reports of a massacre of 5 people on November 2 in Cajamarca in the department of Tolima, by men in army uniforms. Paramilitary roadblocks were taking people off buses at the peace community of San Jose de Apartado in late October, while at the same time army and paramilitary units were raiding houses in Arauqita. The Embera indigenous reported paramilitary incursions of men armed to the teeth and threatening their people in mid-November.

Shortly afterwards, on November 25, the beginning of the paramilitary ‘demobilization’ took place. Colombians are told that the paramilitaries are in ‘negotiations’ with the government, giving the government the chance to focus on destroying the guerrillas. At the ceremony, a paramilitary unit in Medellin called the Cacique Nutibara Bloc, consisting of 850 members, turned in some 112 weapons. The paramilitary foot soldiers were sent off to ‘readjustment training’ and will be given government stipends. The leaders remain at large, however, and used the occasion of the ‘demobilization’ to broadcast video messages to the nation. Carlos Castano, for example, who has been convicted of arranging assassinations and massacres, who has admitted to drug trafficking and assassinations (the latter in his published biography), went on television. So did paramilitary leaders Salvatore Mancuso and Diego Murillo Bejarano.

Human Rights Watch was unimpressed. Jose Miguel Vivanco of the Americas division of HRW said: “The broadcast is a travesty. Instead of handing these criminals a microphone, the government should be concentrating on arresting them and bringing them to justice.” Legislator Gustavo Petro called it “the biggest whitewash in history,” asking: “Is pardoning crimes against humanity the way to peace?” Claudia Martinez, a writer from Medellin, wondered: “We are in the difficult position of not knowing whether to laugh, cry, or be filled with indignation.” She wondered about the equipment the paramilitaries turned over: “One doesn’t have to be very intelligent to notice that the weapons turned over are a tiny fraction of the thousands of guns the BCN had in Medellin, to say nothing of the communication equipment they had. Where is all that?”

The dramatic gesture of paramilitary ‘demobilization’ has not stopped the murderous campaign against the social movements, however.

The UK Colombia Solidarity Campaign reported “34-year old JOSE DE JESUS ROJAS CASTANEDA was assassinated at 9pm on 3 December in the Bosque neighborhood in the southeast part of Barrancabermeja. Mr. Rojas Castaneda was killed in front of his wife, who was in her ninth month of pregnancy. He worked in the Instituto Tecnico Superior de Comercio and was a member of the municipal educators’ union ASEM. He was the brother of Jacqueline Rojas Castaneda, who is a leader of the Women’s organization OFP and the brother-in-law of Juan Carlos Galvis (president of the CUT in Barrancabermeja and a Sinaltrainal union leader).”

The ‘demobilized’ BCN itself assassinated a councillor of the municipality of San Carlos in Antioquia on December 14. Paramilitaries killed unionist Severo Bastos on the same day, in Villa del Rosario near Cucuta.

Renewing the Offensive

If it failed to stop the paramilitary killings, ‘demobilization’ did manage to embolden Colombia’s President and Army to talk, and act, even tougher against their perceived enemies.

The Colombian Army was so offended by Human Rights Watch’s comments that they put a poll on their website. The question? “How would you describe Jose Miguel Vivanco, who called the demobilization of paramilitaries a ‘spectacle of impunity’, knowing that there are now 850 less weapons killing Colombians?” Possible answers: “1. He should support the process. 2. He should not express an opinion. 3. He’s right. 4. He is supporting terrorism.”

In the event, the Army may not have gotten the result it wanted: 62% of 358 people who checked the site said Vivanco was right at the time El Tiempo reported it on December 7.

Meanwhile Uribe was giving a speech urging the “extermination” of the guerrillas “by good ways or bad,” and that “we need to calculate less and risk more.” (Reported by El Tiempo Dec. 6, 2003) The speech was followed by the passage of a new ‘anti-terror’ law (enabling arrests without warrants, phone taps, and more), and claims of a major combat between the army and the paramilitaries, in which 24 paramilitaries were killed and 39 captured.

On December 22, the ‘Casa de Mujeres Trabajadoras’ (House of Working Class Women), a part of the ‘Ruta Pacifica de Mujeres’, an important women’s peace group in Colombia, released a communique. Their office was raided by four armed men, who forced the workers there to kneel on the ground with weapons pointed at them, went directly for the computers, and made off with five of them. The women are unsure who the raiders were, but their communique states clearly that they “believe this action is an effect of the politics of ‘Democratic Security’ and the ‘Counterterrorism Statute’, which place under suspicion and harrassment all organizations that work for human rights and in this case women’s rights.”

Another front of the offensive was the aerial fumigation program. Colombia’s daily, El Tiempo, reported on December 5 that the US Congress has approved aerial fumigation of National Parks and Nature Reserves in Colombia. In the same article, it was noted that “Colombia’s national parks occupy some 10 million hectares and are considered the second richest part of the world in terms of biodiversity after Brazil.” An anonymous source “close to the government” was quoted saying that the fumigations “persist in acting as if reducing coca cultivation was weakening narcotrafficking. But reducing cultivation is not the same as reducing the global drug supply.” The report ended with a discussion of the Colombian laws and international environmental agreements that would be violated by such fumigation, followed by quotes from the Vice-Minister of Justice arguing for it.

Reverses

Uribe is talking about ‘extermination’, the army is accusing Human Rights Watch of ‘supporting terrorism’, the pardoned paramilitaries are still killing, and the fumigation program continues. But not everything is going Uribe’s way.

The FARC, in a gruesome way, continue to demonstrate that Uribe’s ‘Democratic Security’ policy isn’t stopping them. A bombing in Barranquilla on December 16 killed a woman and injured 20 others. A captain of the police force was killed in fighting with the guerrillas in Cauca on December 21.

More hopeful are the political reverses Uribe has faced. The referendum of October 25, in which the government’s program was defeated (1), was the first such reverse. The departmental and municipal elections, which brought democratic left candidates to power all over the country, was another.

In Cauca itself, the government has tried to exploit the indigenous movement for autonomy as part of its counterinsurgency campaign. But on December 15, the Indigenous Regional Council of Cauca (CRIC) sent a letter to Uribe clearing this issue up. CRIC’s position was reported in the Colombian media, and the letter said: “we arrive at the conclusion that, sadly, this war is not one between armies fighting for state power, but of armies against the civilian population, especially against the population living in territories with strategic importance, economic or military in nature. Here we see the strengthening of war-like confrontation, a condition that maintains anxiety and a high risk of forced disappearances among our indigenous communities of Cauca as well as those in other parts of the country. We have told you that the establishment of military or police bases in various communities has not proven to be the solution. On the contrary, their existence has proven that there are imminent risks for the population, since their presence only serves to encourage armed confrontations.”

Uribe’s privatizations have been contested as well. In October, a coalition of trade unions called for a campaign against the World Bank’s restructuring of Colombia’s Mining Code, the liquidation of the state mining corporation MINERCOL, and the removal of the ‘restructured’ mining sector from even a semblance of social control.

Right now, there is a battle going on in the Colombian Congress. Legislator Alexander Lopez, from Valle del Cauca, has brought a case against Uribe for violating the Constitution, the agreement on public services, the penal code, and the disciplinary code by liquidating Colombia’s state telephone company, Telecom, by presidential decree without following proper legal procedure. In his statement to the Congressional Committee dealing with the case, Uribe, instead of answering the charges, accused Lopez of engaging in “parliamentary subversion”, attempting to link Lopez’s defense of Colombia’s public telephone company to terrorism. Communiques from Lopez’s office on December 17 and 18 asked Uribe to answer the charges rather than make insinuations.

In the wake of the paramilitary pardon, respected journalist Fernando Garavito wrote in his regular column, ‘The Lord of the Flies’, that:

” what’s at stake is more than just the reinsertion of a group of common criminals’ much more than pardon and erasing from memory of the atrocities of Castano and Mancuso’ this peace is an ethical impossibility. With it the slightest possibility of justice is eliminated’ If things continue on this road, it will be no surprise if in a little while the minimal necessary elements for the existence of even this cardboard democracy of ours begin to disappear'”

While Uribe tries to tear it up, Colombia’s movements are fighting hard for more than just a ‘cardboard democracy’.

Notes:

The sources for this article are communiques of the various organizations quoted and the Colombian and North American press. If you want a specific reference, write to encamino@tools4change.org

For a note from the beginning of the paramilitary negotiations, see my ‘Paramilitary Negotiations’, ZNet November 27 2003:

1) See my ‘Colombia’s Referendum’, ZNet October 27, 2003:

Letter to a Zionist

http://www.zcommunications.org/letter-to-a-zionist-by-justin-podur

It’s been almost a year. Do you remember it? It was a speaking event like any other but it sticks out in my mind even now. A friend from the International Solidarity Movement had come back from the Occupied Territories and was giving his report. Others offered some analysis of the situation there. It was well attended. I was the moderator.

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