Humainologie creative dialogue Wed Aug 18 about the ongoing war in Colombia with Manuel Rozental
- Arthur Clark
- Aug 13, 2021
- 7 min read
“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” – Abraham Lincoln
“Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.” - Nelson Mandela
“If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.” - Gandhi
A few dialogues ago, our topic was Civility, with Mike Lake facilitating. Our topic for next Wednesday, August 18, might be called “Incivility,” or “Civil War.” It will be one of the most urgent and important dialogues we have ever had. I would respectfully request that you read this email carefully and participate in the dialogue on August 18 if at all possible.
Our focus will be the ongoing war in Colombia, and Manuel Rozental will be facilitating from that war-infested country. I have appended below this email my synopsis of a book by Abbey Steele, published in 2017, about the civil war in Colombia.
Manuel Rozental is a practicing general and colorectal surgeon with more than 40 years of commitment and experience as an activist with indigenous and popular movements in Colombia, Canada and throughout the continent. As a result of these efforts involving strategic planning, popular education and organizing, writing, collective media, teaching, he has been under recurrent death threats which have forced him into exile on several occasions. Although painful, exile has provided him with the privilege and opportunity to engage with people and processes in Canada and elsewhere and to help weave these peoples and processes from his native Colombia where he now lives and belongs to Pueblos en Camino (Peoples on the Path) a collective effort that weaves initiatives throughout the Americas and elsewhere http://www.pueblosencamino.org
As synchronicity would have it, a member of our own dialogue network is the lead author on a book about violence in fragile states. Abosede Babatunde would be joining our dialogues frequently but the internet connections at her home base of Nigeria have not been friendly. She is the lead author of the book Managing Violent Religious Extremism in Fragile States: Building Institutional Capacity in Nigeria and Kenya, to be published in September by Routledge
With reference to the quotes by Lincoln, Mandela, and Gandhi (above), I would say that they lived at a time when the prognosis for human survival was not as obvious as it is today. I think we are perishing together as fools. If I were an oncologist, and my patient were the human species, sitting in my office and waiting to hear her chances of surviving to the end of this millennium, I would try to be gentle and supportive. But I could not give her a better prognosis than the one that “Nightbird” received for her cancer: Two percent. Yet two percent is not zero, as “Nightbird” pointed out. I think our attitude from now on should be like what was expressed by the editors of All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis (originally published 2020, paperback 2021):
“And what we want to tip toward is community, care, repair, and renewal. We want to tip toward life. While it is too late to save everything – some ecological damage is irreparable, some species are already gone, ice has already melted, lives have already been lost – it is far too soon to give up on the rest.”
In the time that is left, let’s learn to live together as human beings as quickly and as globally and as collaboratively and as effectively as we possibly can. Two percent is not zero. It is far too soon to give up.
Here is the Zoom link for next Wednesday, August 18, starting at 6:30 PM Calgary time:
Topic: Humainologie creative dialogue Time: August 18, 2021 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Every week on Wed, until Aug 25, 2021, 8 occurrence(s) August 18, 2021 06:30 PM Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89228710166?pwd=akg1UXk1dmM5bFBIa2wyckxXbkpwZz09 Meeting ID: 892 2871 0166 Passcode: 12345
Arthur
Book: (Abbey Steele) Democracy and Displacement in Colombia’s Civil War (2017)
“In this book, I distinguish political cleansing from other forms of displacement and set out to explain when and where armed groups attempt political cleansing,” writes the author in an orientation to the book. Three different types of targeting are delineated; it is the third type that is designed to produce political cleansing. The first type is selective targeting of individuals. The second is indiscriminate targeting (e.g., of an entire city). The third type is collective targeting, which may be directed for example against a specific ethnic group or against a neighborhood that voted for a particular party.
Abbey Steele is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Amsterdam who arrived in Colombia for the first time in 2002 and carried out her research for the book over the next few years. Her book helps understand how violent conflict arises and persists.
She interviews displaced persons in Colombia and gains access to cluttered archives in the region called Urabá in Northwest Colombia. Her findings in this region of Colombia shed light upon displacements in other parts of the world (she mentions many examples in context) and also on how targeted populations have defended themselves against violence. She finds that it can significantly diminish the risk of violence from paramilitaries if the community in danger has connections with outside support: “Connections with external support networks also help bolster community members’ resolve. Indigenous communities with pre-existing institutions and external supporters, and a handful of peace communities have managed to create the rare conditions needed to avoid political cleansing.” Successful resistance to collective targeting also depends upon “coordination to keep a minimum core of the targeted group from leaving, so that the interdependent risk among households is relatively lower than moving elsewhere.”
Chapter 1, “Characterizing and Explaining Wartime Displacement,” notes that voter records can provide armed groups with information about whom to target. “Colombia’s experience suggests that careful attention to electoral rules and institutions are necessary to prevent such a backlash.” Chapters 2 and 3 provide historical background. In the 1930s there had been some progress with land redistribution. In the 1940s, rural peasants had found a champion in Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, “a renegade Liberal who promoted economic redistribution and increased political participation…” His growing support split the Liberal party, leading to the election of Conservative Mariano Ospina in 1946 with only 41% of the vote. Then on April 9, 1948, Gaitán was assassinated in Bogotá. His supporters rioted in the capital. This ignited “La Violencia,” a Conservative backlash to the progressive changes of the 30s and 40s. More than half a million Colombians were displaced, moving into far-flung areas of new colonization, some of which were not even incorporated into the political entity of Colombia until the 1990s.
Chapter 3, “The Contemporary Civil War in Colombia, 1986-2012,” describes the ascendancy of FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the expansion of the counterinsurgent paramilitaries. In an effort to reduce the violence, elections were extended to the local level. Between 1986 and 1990, fiscal and budgetary authority for education, health, and other public goods was given to municipalities. The perverse result was more violence! “Municipalities became attractive targets for armed groups because of the transfers and royalties they received and because the state was unable to provide security to them.” Soon the vast profits to be made in the cocaine trade, the rise of the Medellín cartel, and the Cali cartel’s corruption of national politics exacerbated the situation in Colombia.
In Chapter 5, the author focuses on the town of San José de Apartadó and surrounding hamlets. The voting records revealed that in the 1990s many people had voted for the leftist UP, affiliated with FARC, and had been targeted both by the paramilitaries and the military. Death threats led to displacement of about 90 families, who were housed in the municipal coliseum in town. While they were there, some of the families decided to establish a “peace community.” “In March 1997, the peace community was officially created. It declared neutrality, meaning that the community would not interact with any armed actor, including the state.” That did not stop the violence against the peace community, but it did lead to survival of the community on the land despite ongoing threats. By one count, 180 community members were killed over about a decade, more than three-quarters of the deaths attributed to the paramilitaries and the army. Amnesty International reported 170 killed between 1997 and 2008. “In terms of external support, the community maintains close relationships with international NGOs, particularly the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) and Peace Brigades International. These organizations provide volunteers who live in or make regular visits to the community and denounce violence against its members to a wide network of activists.” FARC and the military may be more susceptible to international pressure than the paramilitaries. “Colombian army generals I interviewed complained that any time the military attempted to enter the zone, international advocacy organizations lobbied the Colombian government to pressure the military to withdraw.”
In her Conclusion, the author states: “Political cleansing becomes an option available to armed groups when collective identities are linked to one side of the war or another. As a result, the policymakers and the international community should avoid triggering such shifts to the extent possible.” She advises that “local-level elections for representatives of neighborhoods or small communities should be avoided in civil war settings because they allow armed groups to make a connection between where people live and how they vote.” Also, elections become more dangerous during a civil war when there is participation of political parties linked to an active armed group. The author even goes so far as to write this: “Given that the risk of such violence increases as elections approach the normative goals of representation and participation, it raises the question whether or not holding elections during ongoing civil wars is worth it at all.”
Displacement provoked by insurgents results in flight to areas controlled by the state. Displacement provoked by the state drives the targeted population away from such areas and they may flee the state altogether. Such “expulsion” may lead to the spread of violence across borders. If those fleeing state violence seek areas within the state but outside government control, that “segregation” will also affect subsequent events. In Colombia, both these patterns have occurred in the past, but more recently a third pattern, “integration” into the major population centers, has been the dominant pattern.
A more detailed summary of the civil war in Colombia is available here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombian_conflict and that article includes the Abbey Steele book under “Further Reading.” The Abbey Steele book may not be for the general reader because of its massive data and detail. However, it is that data and detail that provide the solid foundation for her very important conclusions.
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