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Colombia at the Crossroads
Aug. 23, 2007 When Jorge Morales left Colombia in 2000 to study for a few years in Europe, he felt like he was escaping a country on the brink of collapse. Thugs armed with automatic rifles roamed city streets looking for anyone with more than a few pesos in their pocket, guerillas and paramilitary groups terrorized people every day, and narcotics traffickers forced local populations in the countryside to work on coca plantations.
Today, he is happy to be back in his homeland. A massive construction boom is changing the skyline of the capital city, Bogota; new factories are opening in the provinces; and many Colombians are now able to buy their own homes for the first time.
"We have lots of resources like natural gas, and we have so much oil that we export large amounts of it," says the part-time teacher. "Things used to be so grim – now, at least we have hope."
Many Colombians feel the same way. The current government under President Alvaro Uribe has a public approval rating as high as 80 percent in some polls. Efforts to improve security and promote human rights have gradually helped to lift the blanket of fear that suffocated communities around the nation for decades.
In June, when guerilla forces killed 11 lawmakers who had been held captive since 2002, there was an unprecedented outpouring around the country of public grief and anger at the armed rebels that culminated in a series of anti-kidnapping protests involving over a million people – a public demonstration of defiance that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
But dig a little deeper, and it is clear that Colombia's human rights problem is not so much shrinking as simply changing shape.
There is no doubt that over the last five years, the situation has vastly improved in urban areas, where up to 75 percent of the population lives. "The government has had some success in getting armed groups out of big cities and major transit routes," says James Patton, director of the Colombian American Friends Service Committee. "But other smaller cities are now receiving a lot of the conflict."
Part of the reason for the increasing violence in the provinces is because these areas have become a focus for guerilla groups such as the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) trying to counter the surging presence of government troops. "With the military going in and the direct confrontation between the military and the FARC, and the paramilitaries and the FARC, you are seeing a lot more conflict," says Mr. Patton.
The government crackdown is leading the guerillas to counter-react, which is directly affecting the human rights environment, says Jenny Neme, director of Justapaz, a faith- based group that works to promote peace in Colombia. "The government says that the human rights situation is under control, but organizations such as ours that work in the peace process have the view that rights abuses are continuing," she says.
Some human rights workers in rural areas paid a high price when their city cousins staged the recent mass protests, for example. A few days after the marches, guerillas attacked workers at one humanitarian aid group in a small village south of Bogota, and two priests were killed. They were most likely seen as symbols of an increasingly powerful civil society movement, and their deaths were intended to send the message that the guerillas are still in control in the countryside, says Norma Velez, executive secretary of the Justice, Solidarity and Peace Commission, a group that worked closely with the priests.
Another problem that results from bringing military force to bear on certain regions is that armed groups are now seeking out new territory that traditionally has not had a high guerilla presence. Under the U.S.-funded Plan Colombia, the crackdown on armed groups has mainly targeted narcotics trafficking regions in the southern part of the country. These guerilla-led drug producers now appear to be shifting operations elsewhere and setting up new plants in areas previously considered largely coca-free.
"Because of fumigation and other anti-coca programs in the South, the crop is now grown not just there but pretty much everywhere in Colombia," says Bonnie Klassen, who works for the Mennonite Church of Canada as its Colombia representative. "We are seeing a corresponding increase in armed groups in these new coke regions and drop in security."
Better security in the cities and the volatile situation in the countryside have spawned a sharp political split in Colombia. "Right now, Colombian society is highly polarized – many people are in favor of defeating the FARC without arguing about the means, and there are many other people also against the violations being committed by the FARC but who think that other methods must be used," says Gustavo Gallon, a civil rights lawyer and director of the Colombia Commission of Jurists.
The degree of security that people enjoy varies greatly across social class, and "many people in the country are afraid," he says. One particular problem is the killing of innocent bystanders by government forces struggling to meet quotas of guerillas killed or captured. When the military are unable to find enough guerillas to meet the quota, soldiers reportedly kill random villagers in poor areas and later claim that they belonged to armed groups.
"These victims are known as 'false positives,' and the practice is to demonstrate that the government is making progress in fighting the guerillas," says Jorge Cebellos, director of La Clinica Noel, an advocacy group that works with the poor in the city of Medellin. While the exact figures are disputed, evidence suggests that the number of such incidents rose into the hundreds per year after Uribe took power in 2002 and began asking the army to crack down on the guerillas. "The problem has been pointed out to central government, and it has recently decreased as a result – but it is still occurring," says Mr. Cebellos.
The Colombian military view these incidents as isolated infringements by a small number of ill-disciplined soldiers. "It is an infrequent event, and it doesn't mean that all the components of the (armed) forces act this way," says Colonel Jorge Enrique Acero Terenillo, who runs the human rights program at the National Military School of Colombia. After receiving a complaint, the army investigates to determine if the event occurred and who is responsible. If it is found that rules of military conduct have not been followed, "we apply a punishment if it is necessary," he says.
The decision of the Uribe government to pursue a military solution to the conflict has clearly changed the dynamics of the problem in the countryside and led to an escalation in the cycle of violence there. While cities have certainly won a period of respite, nongovernmental organization workers now see signs that the fighting may be about to return to the urban battlefield.
"There is a newly developed presence of armed groups in the cities where paramilitaries are taking control of fringe economies," says Mr. Patton of the American Friends. "The FARC are battling for key urban areas, especially in places like Buenaventura, where the violence is out of control." The city of 325,000 on the Pacific Coast has suffered a spate of bombings recently, and travel warnings advise foreigners not to go there. If such problems aren't dealt with "then you are going to see this conflict re-urbanize in a new and different form," he says.
Colombia-hands say that the Uribe government's mistake has been to try and deal with a many-sided problem in a one-dimensional way. "This is a complex conflict, but this government's focus is almost exclusively on the military solution," says Ms. Klassen of the Mennonite Church.
Two of the main factors that the government is currently failing to address are the problem of impunity under the justice system and the economic causes of the conflict.
The fact that many of those in the paramilitaries have been allowed to escape justice is starting to undermine many people's faith in democracy as a system. Since the Uribe government was elected, thousands of paramilitaries have been decommissioned and returned to communities without having their crimes investigated.
"We have had the worst period of impunity with this government – about 40,000 paramilitaries have benefited from government decisions not to prosecute," says Mr. Gallon. Other estimates put the figure at a lower 30,000, but most experts agree that around 15 percent of these decommissioned paramilitaries are unable to reintegrate into society and end up returning to some form of armed criminal activity. While some in Colombia agree with Mr. Uribe that the national healing process should start with an act of forgiveness toward armed rebels who may have been recruited when they were young boys, others see broad negative social implications involved in letting people off the hook.
"What is happening right now is that democracy is weakening because the government's policy is effectively to legalize these paramilitaries in normal society," says Mr. Gallon.
Others see a danger due to the fact the Colombian society will let the atrocities fade from the collective memory and so may be condemned to repeat the same mistakes in the future. "We have a tendency to forget our national history; this means that we can't apply lessons from the past, and so it ends up happening again," says Gabriel Jaime Bustamante, coordinator at the Office for Victims of the Armed Conflict in Medellin City. His department has devoted considerable resources to a campaign designed to help the public remember victims of the conflict. "We want to begin a debate on why these things occurred, to make it a problem that people can see," he says.
Like many internal conflicts around the world, the root cause of much of the strife in Colombia is related to economic opportunity – or lack of it. "This is a conflict that has fundamentally to do with economics and political exclusion, and that has to be addressed," says Ms. Klassen. Although investment is strong and the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) has posted growth of around 5 percent for the last few years, there is little improvement in the quality of life for the average person on the street. Unemployment is steady near 10 percent but many of those who have jobs are only employed as part-time or itinerant workers.
"For normal people in the community, there has been no economic improvement," says Fabio Alonso Meza, coordinator of the Fundacion Servicio Colombiano de Desarrollo Social (SERCOLDES), a social development and education training group. "Many people still live below the poverty line. Security has been created to try and keep macro-economic indicators strong, but it hasn't really filtered down to the base of society or helped people's social situation."
Many view the improvement in the security situation in some cities largely as a superficial stopgap that can't last unless underlying economic problems are fixed. The Uribe government has made much of the fact that the situation with the guerillas has improved, but those familiar with the social situation in such provincial cities as Cali and Bucaramanga say that life is still just as hopeless. To be sure, even in areas where increased military presence hasn't attracted more violence, "having police present in communities doesn't affect the fact that people are still starving and have no opportunities for work," says Mr. Meza.
The fact that many rural Colombians have no economic choices is sowing the seeds of a fresh round of unrest. "If people don't have alternatives, then that generates a lot of social conflict," says Mr. Patton. Recruitment of youth by armed groups such as gangs or paramilitaries "really has a lot to do with the fact that there are no alternatives, there is no educational access, there are no legitimate work opportunities," he says. "They are essentially in systems that push them into social conflict situations."
Many human rights workers argue that the government needs to have a broader, more holistic view of human rights. The original Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948 sought to protect both freedom from fear and freedom from want, but the Uribe government has promoted only the former. Colombia needs to develop broad social possibilities for individuals as "that is the foundation for human rights," says Mr. Patton.
Taking a Broad Approach
Such pleas for addressing some of the economic and social problems that lie behind the conflict have long fallen on deaf ears. One area where these issues are most pressing is the high numbers of people displaced by conflict in the countryside who flee to urban areas. These internal refugees live in sprawling shantytowns on the outskirts of large cities such as Barranquilla on the Caribbean Coast and Cali in the South. With large cities already straining under the load of supporting the displaced, part of this deep pool of homeless humanity is now starting to trickle into small and medium-sized towns.
"Displaced people are flowing into small cities where there is absolutely no infrastructure to deal with them," says Mr. Patton. "Often local governments are connected to one of the armed groups and don't want to receive these people."
Church groups have long recognized that simply freeing people from the cycle of violence doesn't ensure that a person's human rights are met and upheld. A broader approach recognizes that things such as education and health are basic needs and that development is a human right.
"Human beings should live with dignity; this means not only civil and political rights but also the right to food … the right not to live in conditions of poverty, to be able to relate to others and live in a healthy and dignified way," says Ms. Neme of Justapaz.
A lasting peace requires "social opportunities, political opportunities, economic opportunities, and spiritual opportunities," says Ms. Velez of the Justice, Solidarity and Peace Commission. "Without the ability to recover human dignity through work that fosters family processes and community processes, there can't be peace," she says.
A major part of the problem as to why the Uribe government has focused on a narrow military solution to the conflict is the close link between the anti-guerilla campaign and military aid provided by the United States under Plan Colombia. Many people around the nation view the strong emphasis on military means in Plan Colombia as a key accelerant in the cycle of violence that has ignited in rural areas.
To be sure, Plan Colombia ties much of its military aid to various conditionality clauses that require human rights to be respected and promoted. But critics say that the United States ought to more strictly enforce these conditions. "If there were more consistency in requesting the government to comply… the United States could do much more to improve the human rights situation in Colombia," says Mr. Gallon.
The small amount of resources allocated in Plan Colombia for nonmilitary programs is the flip side to this problem. Washington has long been criticized that its emphasis on a military solution to the drug trafficking and armed groups will do little to fix what are essentially socioeconomic problems. The Colombians themselves, in the original version of Plan Colombia, included ample provision for addressing social and economic rights.
But after years of pointing out the shortsightedness of adding more guns to the conflict, the United States may finally be starting to pay attention. Sources familiar with the matter say that Plan Colombia will change tack in the future to make development and social issues more of a focus. As more economic issues are addressed and development projects come on line, there is likely to be a corresponding drop in funds that are currently allocated exclusively to the military solution.
Some areas in Colombia aren't waiting to take the lead from the United States on tackling the social causes of the conflict. Lawmakers in the state of Antioquia, located about 150 miles northwest of Bogota, recognized some years ago that issues such as justice and access to education were fundamentally linked to creating a lasting peace and so set up a Department of Human Rights in 2002. The department – the only one of its kind in all 33 Colombian states – runs programs ranging from promoting concepts of international humanitarian law to preventing young people from joining guerilla groups.
Rocio Pineda Garcia, who directs the department, admits that solving the problem of physical violence is key. "But the causes of the conflict are socioeconomic and political," she says. Around 85 percent of the department's resources are devoted to dealing with the problem of displaced people. Once an area is declared safe to return to, her office provides financial support for housing, education, and health, conditional on the displaced returning to their home areas.
"This topic is very important – the government is very worried about it because of the loss of life and loss of freedom, the degradation, the poverty," she says. She adds that partly as a result of her department's work, people in Antioquia are generally more informed about their human rights than those in other states.
"The government of Antioquia has some differences with the central government about how to address human rights issues – we have different priorities," she says. "We think that we need to change the conditions of the poor people (through equality programs)."
The state capital of Medellin was once the stronghold of infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. It's hard to believe that just six or seven years ago, Medellin had one of the highest murder rates for any city in Latin America – more than 500 percent higher than in Washington, D.C. Today, steep valley walls that hunch over the city are dotted with pristine shopping malls where middle-class Colombians dine at a selection of restaurants hardly distinguishable from malls in suburban Houston or residential Miami. For the first six months of 2007, the murder rate in Medellin was lower than in many large U.S. cities such as Atlanta.
Antioquia also has made efforts to address the question of responsibility for human rights violations committed during the conflict. Although as a regional government, it has to work within national laws that have already granted immunity to many paramilitaries, the state keeps records of who the victims were and assists with identifying remains at any mass graves that are found. Officials from Antioquia have asked the national government to help with these tasks and, in some cases, managed to pressure Bogota into changing policy on how it deals with records of the conflict.
The city of Medellin also has created a program to publicize atrocities that occurred during the conflict by compiling a book of testimony written by families of the disappeared. Making these crimes a public issue not only has helped the victims recover, but also has helped decommissioned paramilitaries reintegrate into communities by getting issues of fear and resentment out into the open. "The truth is very difficult for everybody," says Alejandro Munera Sanin, who works with reconciliation issues in the city office. "But Medellin's reintegration policies have had very good results; it should be a national program."
Indeed, in some areas Medellin is increasingly being held up as an example of how more constructive methods of resolving conflict issues have worked better than strictly military solutions. As a city that has dragged itself from the abyss of violence and now has one of the most vibrant economies in the nation, the rest of Colombia is taking note. At a Congress on the Human Rights of Children held at a university in downtown Bogota in July, many of the presentations and speeches featured over two days were by officials invited from Medellin.
The children of Medellin are evidence that city leaders are on the right track. At the Parque Biblioteca Espana, a library built as a social experiment in one of the poorest slums north of the city, local kids are excited about their futures. The huge black structure, built with a combination of local funds and international aid, was designed to be an object of such bizarre incongruity in a South American slum that it would act as a magnet to curious children, many of whom can't afford shoes, let alone books.
The hoped for Pied Piper effect is working. On a steamy Friday afternoon, the elevators are broken and the lecture hall is still under construction, but children from the nearby slum of Santo Domingo Savio are thronging the building. Some are quietly reading while others busily draw. Little Roosevelt is only 12, but he wears a shiny chain around his neck like his soccer star heroes. He says he comes to the library twice a week to use the free computers for school projects. They may not be the latest models with sleek flat-screen monitors, but he doesn't care. His friend Juan-Esteban also comes to the library a few times a week, mainly to read the geography books.
Outside in the hot midday sun, 12-year old Caterina-Andrea is talking to her friends. "I like living in Medellin because it has this library," she says. Her classmate Ange-Tatiana standing nearby wants to be an anthropologist when she grows up. I tell her she will have to go to university to do that. She smiles and nods at me, like that much is obvious.
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