INTRODUCTION
As an introductory note for the present work it seemed to me the most convenient to refer to a letter written by S. Freud in Vienna (September 1932) addressed to the "esteemed Professor Einstein" as it appears in the greeting, and with which it can be described short, clearly and concisely the origins and manifestations of the war. The letter is titled "WHY THE WAR" and I will not transcribe it all, only the part that I believe is of interest to us.
“… Conflicts of interest between men are settled in principle through violence. So it is throughout the animal kingdom, from which man should not exclude himself; in his case there are still conflicts of opinion, which reach the maximum degree of abstraction and seem to require another technique to resolve. But that's a late build. In the beginning, in a small horde of human beings, it was muscular strength that decided to whom something belonged or whose will should be done. Muscular strength was soon increased and replaced by the use of instruments: whoever has the best weapons wins or uses them with the most skill. As weapons are introduced, mental superiority already begins to take the place of brute muscular strength; the ultimate purpose of the fight remains the same: one of the parties,for the damage it receives or for the paralysis of its forces, it will be constrained to lay down its claim or its antagonism. This will be achieved in the most radical way when violence permanently eliminates the opponent, that is, when it kills him. This has the double advantage of preventing him from restarting his opposition and that his fate will make others reluctant to follow his example… ”In my opinion, this is the origin of the guerrilla groups, when through the means of politics they are not can exercise a clear opposition difference of opinions happens to be resolved in the violent field, that is, "The War" or armed conflict as it has been called in our case. But, here we have what Eduardo Pizarro Leongómez has called "The Negative Draw: not even the army has been able to defeat the guerrillas,not even the guerrillas have been able to defeat the army, despite the superiority of the latter, this situation has led to a prolongation of the conflict with no prospects for a solution by military means.
The notion of a military tie does not imply, then, as in El Salvador, the existence of a strategic balance between the two conflicting poles. " There was no state capacity in Colombia to resolve the conflict in its favor in the military field, as could have happened in Uruguay or Argentina. The negative draw, with ups and downs has been a constant for three decades.
But let's continue with another apart from Mr. Freud's letter to finish understanding the situation well: “… We know that this regime was modified in the course of development, a certain path led from violence to law. But which way? Only one, I think. He passed through the fact that one's greatest strength could be offset by the joining of several weak ones. "L'union fait la force"… It continues to be violence ready to be directed against any individual who confronts it; works with the same means, pursues the same ends; the difference only resides, really and effectively, in that it is no longer the violence of an individual that is imposed, but that of the community… there are in the community two sources of movement in law (Rechtssunrube), but also of its development. First,the attempts of certain individuals among the dominators to rise above all existing limitations, that is, to retrograde from the rule of law to that of violence; and secondly, the continuous efforts of the oppressed to seek more power and see those changes recognized in the law, that is, to advance, on the contrary, from an uneven right to equal rights. This last current becomes particularly substantive when shifts in power relations actually occur within the community, as can happen as a result of various historical factors. The law can then adapt little by little to the new power relations, or, what is more frequent, if the ruling class is not willing to give a reason for this change, it leads to uprising, civil war,that is, to a temporary cancellation of the right and to new confrontations of violence, after which a new power of law is instituted. " In this way, the panorama about the origins of wars in a community is clarified a bit. Although, in my view, Mr. Freud put aside something that is almost always present in struggles within a community and that is solidarity support: he may find individuals who join this struggle, even without their interests are the same (which does not mean that they are contrary) by the simple fact of belonging to the same class (the oppressed) in order to wait for future support if circumstances so suggest. This can be observed in union workers' demonstrations,where the demonstration may originate to demand certain rights in a specific sector, but out of solidarity, the demonstration extends to other sectors.
But how to prevent this uprising or civil war to which S. Freud refers? The answer can also be given by following the course of the letter: “A safe prevention of wars is only possible if men agree to the institution of a central violence in charge of understanding all conflicts of interest.
Obviously, two demands are met here: that such a higher instance be created and that it be granted the required power. One thing would be useless without the other. " This is also suggested by René Girard when he speaks of the "rationalization of revenge" understood revenge in violent terms, with the argument that he manipulates it without danger; makes it an extremely effective technique for healing and, secondarily, for preventing violence.
But, the prevention of war does not occur with the sole institutionalization of an entity in charge of the rationalization of violence, but a certain degree of conformity has to be found among the people of the community to avoid violent demonstrations that can go from the achievement from the objective in particular to the armed organization with political ends. I want to say that we have to avoid social injustices, we cannot continue to see, for example, in neighborhoods of Bogotá, stratum six buildings with a hill behind plagued by people who do not even have the minimum conditions that guarantee their survival, such as the case of certain sections of the avenue bypass.These situations are what cause manifestations of disagreement to emerge in people that are manifested by different forms of violence (from a simple rap to the formation of armed groups).
In this way we have made an introduction to what the armed conflict is and I hope that I have managed to get the issue off to a good start. The work consists of three parts which are: Conditions and emergence of the guerrilla groups; development, weaknesses and errors of the Colombian guerrilla and the peace process.
CONDITIONS FOR THE EMERGENCE OF SUBVERSIVE MOVEMENTS
Background
The guerrilla in Colombia was not invented by a left that sought to seize power. It is much older, it is a popular response to the existing violence of the rich and powerful. Since colonial times, popular protests and rebellions have been repressed with blood and fire. Anyone who has read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez knows that countless civil wars followed the repression of the oligarchy. Officially, these wars are interpreted as conflicts between the Conservative and Liberal Parties. But much more than this, they were wars motivated by social inequalities where bipartisan leaders took advantage to extend their power.
Thus it comes that the armed struggle as an expression of social conflicts is a much older historical fact than guerrilla organizations.
In 1948, the country's oligarchs ordered the killing of popular leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, who at this time is the hope of millions of Colombians to achieve social change. The so-called “violence” (1948-53) continues, which takes the lives of at least 200,000 people. Once again, the Colombian population is being massacred under the pretext of a struggle between liberals and conservatives. But again it is a war of the landowners against the people. The most important aspect of this latest civil war is the fact that independent peasant groups are emerging in various parts of the country to defend themselves against the terror of the powerful. They are the first cell of the Colombian guerrilla today. Various peasant self-defense groups, born in the 1940s and 1950s,They do not give up their weapons after the bipartisan agreement between conservatives and liberals that gives life to the so-called “National Front”. As the two large parties rotate in government, resistance from below grows. In the countryside the power of the self-organized peasants who create Independent Republics is maintained.
Meanwhile, in the early 1960s, a broad popular movement against the National Front of the oligarchy was born. It is the "United Front of the People", led by the revolutionary priest Camilo Torres. It mobilizes tens of thousands of workers, residents, students and peasants who join their cry against social injustice and the bipartisan regime. Both movements became targets of terror once again: The Independent Peasant Republic of Marquetalia is annihilated by the army in 1964, Camilo Torres as leader of the FUP receives a series of death threats until he decides to retreat to the countryside where there is a first group of the THE N.
In Colombia there were exceptionally favorable conditions for the consolidation of insurgent projects in the early sixties; However, there were no conditions for this experience to be transformed into a power option, due to multiple features of the Colombian society and state, some of the insurgent groups that emerged in the mid-sixties (ELN, EPL, FARC) were able to consolidate but, at the same time, they could not transform themselves into an alternative power factor, as happened in Nicaragua and Cuba.
External factors
The revolutionary struggle for the seizure of political power from the insurrectionary armed focus spread to many Latin American countries in the sixties, under the impact of the Cuban revolution and the theses of “Che” Guevara and Regis Debray. The second wave will have as a demonstration model the triumph of the Sandinista revolution founded no longer on a supposed guerrilla focus, but on an extensive mass front. "Nicaragua revived the enthusiasm of the vanguards for the armed struggle"
The spokesmen for this new modality of political action: in Peru, Hector Bejar of the National Liberation Army (ELN) and Luis de la Puente of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) in 1963; Luis Turcios, Antonio Yon Sosa, Turcios Lima and Luis Trejo of the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR), of Guatemala in 1962; Jorge Ricardo Masseti, leader of the People's Guerrilla Army (EGP), in Argentina (1964); In July 1961, Carlos Fonseca Amador, Silvio Mayorga, Noel Guerrero and Tomás Borge founded the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which began military operations a year later; In Brazil, throughout the sixties various politico-military organizations were formed, such as the Popular Revolutionary Vanguard (VPR), the National Liberation Command (COLINA) and, above all,National Liberation Action of Carlos Mariguella; in Bolivia, under the inspiration of "Che" himself, the National Liberation Army (ELN) was born in 1966; In Uruguay, under the characteristic of the urban insurrectionary focus, Los Tupamaros will emerge under the leadership of Raúl Sendic. In our country, the debut of the first politico-military organizations will also be made from the foquista conception. The MOEC, the FAL, the ELN and even the PCML –of Maoist tendency- will seek the consolidation of armed foci in various parts of the national territory as of 1962The debut of the first politico-military organizations will also be made from the foquista conception. The MOEC, the FAL, the ELN and even the PCML –of Maoist tendency- will seek the consolidation of armed foci in various parts of the national territory as of 1962The debut of the first politico-military organizations will also be made from the foquista conception. The MOEC, the FAL, the ELN and even the PCML –of Maoist tendency- will seek the consolidation of armed foci in various parts of the national territory as of 1962
A second decisive international factor will undoubtedly be the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s, the subsequent splitting of the pro-Soviet communist parties into two wings, and the mechanical attempt to reproduce the experience of the revolution. China in Colombia by the PCML, after the installation of what was to be called the "People's Liberation Army" in northwestern Antioquia. As a result of the failure of the first foquista experiences, the PCML assumes as its own the theory of the "prolonged people's war", which in turn will be questioned from 1980 in the XI congress of that organization.
Internal factors
In the absence of these internal factors, most likely the fate of the Colombian guerrilla would have met the same fate as its fellow men in South America.
The factors that had a higher incidence were:
The approval of the postulates of the XX Congress of the CPSU in relation to the possibility of a peaceful path to revolution, by the Colombian Communist Party (with relative delay, since in 1956 it was outlawed and under the military aggression of Villarrica), was In total, it contravenes the enormous expectations that the Cuban revolution produced in the spirit of radicalized urban sectors at the beginning of the national front. They began to denounce the CP as a compromising organization and the management of new political options began that would end the until then communist monopoly of the revolutionary opposition in the country.
Facing this position, other influences emerge from urban radicalism: on the one hand, an insurrectionary left that starts from the imminent existence of a revolutionary situation in the country, which bitterly criticizes reformism and pacifism, in favor of the armed struggle and abstentionism. electoral (we refer to the militaristic sector of the MOEC to the ELN and the PCML). And, on the other hand, groups such as the FUAR and the future MOIR that, likewise, from radical perspectives, will nevertheless deny the immediate viability of armed action and will put their main emphasis on the organization of urban movements.
These years mark the breakdown of the communist monopoly and the emergence of a wide range of radical political trials that constitute the basis of the current guerrilla movements in the country.
It should not be forgotten that at this stage there is an unusual awakening of the popular, union and student movement after the long dream of violence and military dictatorships. And, on the other hand, this period coincides with the birth of the National Front, which establishes in Colombia a "restricted democracy" founded on the exclusive bipartisan monopoly, the permanent state of siege, the autonomy of the military forces in the management of public order. internal and hyper-centralization of state decisions in the executive branch, to the detriment of popularly elected bodies. Thus, the non-existence of real democratic spaces for political forces other than those of the bipartisanship, blocking their aspirations to influence political decisions, outside the narrow channels provided would have an immediate consequence:the de-institutionalization of political, union and social struggles that would go beyond the legal frameworks (civic strikes, strikes, armed movements, etc.) and will come to have an importance at least equivalent to the forms of participation provided for in the laws. “A considerable proportion of the“ associates ”do not accept the current political system, thus questioning the legitimacy of power, and directing their mobilization through marginal, informal and illegal instruments of political action. The result is the growing polarization between informality-formality in politics and the chronic deinstitutionalization of the political struggle ") and will come to have an importance at least equivalent to the forms of participation provided for by law. “A considerable proportion of the“ associates ”do not accept the current political system, thus questioning the legitimacy of power, and directing their mobilization through marginal, informal and illegal instruments of political action. The result is the growing polarization between informality-formality in politics and the chronic deinstitutionalization of the political struggle ") and will come to have an importance at least equivalent to the forms of participation provided for by law. “A considerable proportion of the“ associates ”do not accept the current political system, thus questioning the legitimacy of power, and directing their mobilization through marginal, informal and illegal instruments of political action. The result is the growing polarization between informality-formality in politics and the chronic deinstitutionalization of the political struggle "The result is the growing polarization between informality-formality in politics and the chronic deinstitutionalization of the political struggle "The result is the growing polarization between informality-formality in politics and the chronic deinstitutionalization of the political struggle "
The first attempts to establish guerrilla foci will be based on the will to "integrate urban revolutionary sentiment with rural violence, in order to undertake guerrilla actions." There is no doubt that in the nuclei of survivors of the old liberal guerrilla there is enormous frustration that will be expressed in the massive entry of its members to the MRL and in many cases, to the revolutionary guerrillas that were born in this period.
The relationship between violence and the current guerrilla movement is surprising, also when reading the biography of a large number of leaders or simple militants of the various guerrilla movements: Alvaro Fayad (ex-commander of the M-19), is an eyewitness of the murder of his own father, for "birds" in the service of the conservative party; Fabio Vásquez Castaño, lost, part of his relatives in his region of origin, Quindio; the vast majority of FARC leaders participated in the guerrillas of the 1950s, including Jacobo Arenas despite his urban origin, etc.
Emergence of Guerrilla Groups
MOEC
The awakening of the non-communist guerrilla movement began with the peasant student labor movement - January 7 (MOEC), which emerged in 1959 and held its first congress in Cali in July 1960, its main promoters being a group of radical students such as Eduardo Aristizabal, Max Santos, Robinson Jiménez and Antonio Larrota. However, from its inception two lines have been formed within the MOEC, one impatient to constitute the first guerrilla foci and the other more oriented to urban political and organizational work, in the working class circles.
At the end of 1964, the MOEC would end up divided into pieces: the sector that would constitute the fundamental nucleus of the Maoist group MOIR, the one that would serve as the basis for other frustrated foquist experiences, the FAL (Armed Forces of Liberation) and, a third sector that would be diluted in other organizations.
In addition to the FAL, in these same years there would be several additional attempts to create armed foci of more or less obscure ideology, such as the Revolutionary Army of Colombia (ERC), promoted in October 1961 by Roberto González Prieto.
THE N
The arrival of a group of scholarship students to Cuba would coincide with the missile crisis that put the world on the brink of a Global confrontation (1962). Immediately part of that group requests and obtains military practices and initiates a series of discussions on the need to “form a group to come to Colombia to develop the theory of“ Che ”Guevara, the guerrilla focus
Thus, encouraged by the only member of that group who had expressly traveled to Cuba in order to undertake a future military experience, Fabio Vásquez Castaño (member of the youth of the MRL), it will be created in Havana, on November 11, 1962, the José Antonio Galán National Liberation Brigade, under the initial leadership of Víctor Medina Morón, Fabio Vásquez and Eriberto Espitia.
The initial cadres of the ELN are, above all, from the university sector and thanks to its initial implantation in an area where previous violence had been very sharp and was highly conflictual, a rapid development was initially achieved, on July 4, 1964 in a ranch belonging to "Captain Parmenio" the ELN would be born. From there the initial nucleus made up of 16 men would depart. On January 7, 1965, the ELN opened fire in the town of Simacota.
EPL
The birth of the MLCP and later of its armed wing the PLA is determined by a special cause, the Sino-Soviet rupture. A group of communist leaders separated from the communist party and promoted this new Maoist organization from 1963 on. Initially, the CINREC (Committee for the Integration of Colombian Revolutionary Movements) was constituted and, in May 1965, the constitution of the new party was held. The reconstruction of the organization begins with the XI congress of the party, in which it broke with Maoism and its aftermath.
FARC
Initially, nuclei of the attacked areas such as Marquetalia, Riochiquito, eastern and southern Tolima, held on July 20, 1964 the conference that would be called the "Southern Block" that issued the agrarian program of the guerrillas, and two years later, in the second national conference of guerrillas the FARC would be created. But the origin of the FARC is not like that of the previous groups studied, but rather, as in 1949 and 1955, they emerge as a response to official violence and military aggression. This is also explained by "Colombia Popular"
This constitutes a central key to understanding the maturity shown by its leading cadres in relation to the change in the political situation that will occur under the Betancourt administration. Not being, therefore, an imminent proposal for the seizure of power, it would develop throughout these years as a proposal for local power, in which the peasants adhered in defense of their interests against landlord and military violence (which in colonization areas they overlap)
When the truce was signed with the guerrilla movement in 1984, the rebel organizations undoubtedly obtained the status of recognized belligerents. Faced with this political fact, the FARC would overcome its status as a peasant guerrilla to become, through the Patriotic Union, one of the two axes around which the destiny of the Colombian guerrilla movement is woven in the current stage.
M-19
It arises as a product of the convergence of a sector expelled from the ranks of the PC and the FARC (Jaime Báteman, Alvaro Fayad, Iván Marino Ospina, Carlos Pizarro), and of a sector from the Popular National Alliance, the socialist ANAPO (Carlos Toledo Plata, Andrés Almarales, Israel Santamaría).
Initially, the nuclei that emerged from the FARC had the idea of establishing urban guerrilla foci under the denomination of the National Liberation Movement, like the Uruguayan Tupamaros. But, the popular tide that the country is experiencing at this stage, under the Anapist dynamics, will produce in the MLN leaders the reality principle that will lead them to be called the April 19 movement and thus be shaped by the Colombian reality more than any other. another premeditated work sprung from their revolutionary consciences
The M-19 was born in 1972 in a meeting held in Bogotá with the participation of 22 people and its first action, three months later, was the theft of the sword of the liberator Simón Bolívar. This fact underscores the profound rupture that the M-19 will mark in relation to the rest of the guerrilla organizations in the country: if through ANAPO it seeks to bring the guerrillas into the country, through the recovery of the Bolivarian tradition it seeks to introduce to the country in the guerrilla. The new guerrilla organization started from the base that the national symbols are a national patrimony and not some simple bourgeois values, therefore, the guerrilla had to rescue the national roots and its historical traditions.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE GUERRILLA GROUPS
With the exception of the M-19, the guerrilla groups have their main presence in the field. It is a very important fact to understand the Colombian news. On many occasions, it has been verified that this characteristic is a great limitation of the insurgent movement. It is said that the guerrillas are peasants, that they withdrew from the cities, that they have no answers for urban problems. This criticism is to some degree correct. But it must not be forgotten that it has always been very difficult to maintain a clandestine organization in cities where repression is much stronger. In addition, there has always also been a significant impact of the guerrillas in the Colombian capitals - from the 1960s to today.
Despite the internal divisions in the guerrilla movement and the different crises of the organizations, the guerrillas become a real danger for the government. In 1977 there was a general strike that expressed the general discontent of the Colombian population. The then president Turbay Ayala (1978-82) reacted with a new stage of repression. Disappearances of opponents begin, torture becomes widespread and new "anti-terrorist" laws are enacted. But contrary to what could be expected, the resistance is spreading throughout the Colombian territory. In these years it is above all the M-19 that exacerbates the war against the regime. In the south, the guerrillas become a small army and are extremely close to some departmental capitals.
But with the passing of time, the Colombian guerrillas have ceased to be organizations with exclusive influence in colonization zones and in clear defense of the peasantry and agrarian struggles to become an armed force that is currently committed to the consolidation of broad territories. The logic that is imposed in the conquest of new territories is directly related to the strategic potential they represent.
There could be no greater doubt about the deliberate way in which the guerrillas have implemented a strategy where at least three purposes are combined:
1. To achieve a high dispersion of the fronts.
2. Diversify finances.
3. Increase influence at the local level.
It can be said that the areas where the presence of the FARC front blocs is strong and active (east, south, south-west and Urabá), the development of the ELN's war fronts is incipient and their armed action is ostensibly low. The same occurs where there is greater development of the ELN war fronts (North, Northwest and Northeast), the presence and action of the FARC are low. In this sense, it could be stated that without ignoring the coincidence of the FARC and the ELN in many regions, there is a division of space that is expressed in the different emphasis on the presence and intensity of the actions of each of the organizations through their front structures.
In the case of the FARC, as of the seventh conference in 1982, a growth strategy based on the unfolding of the existing fronts was adopted; It was then determined that each front would be expanded to two until one front per department was created, and for this purpose the diversification of finances was prioritized. Regarding the financial determinants that made the rise of the fronts possible, in the first half of the 1980s, coca played a decisive role. The resources derived from coca make possible the growing number of fronts that are consolidated in the departments of Meta, Guaviare and Caquetá. Likewise, the FARC is linked to this activity in the departments of Putumayo, Cauca, Santander and in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
In the case of the ELN, it is also towards the beginning of the eighties when it resurfaces and begins to register a significant growth of its fronts after the defeat suffered by the military forces, FF.MM., in Operation Anori in 1973. Its growth stems from the economic strengthening it achieved through the application of ectortion to foreign companies in charge of the construction of the Caño Limosn-Cobeñas pipeline, a practice that in turn constitutes its main source of financing. Later, when oil production in Arauca began, the “Domingo Laín front” developed clever clientelistic schemes to divert resources from the public treasury of this region and win friends.
The Popular Liberation Army, EPL, concentrated mainly in the areas of agro-industrial development in the 1980s, with emphasis on Urabá; in areas with layers of peasants and settlers and the expansion of new groups of landowners (Urabá and Córdoba), and in the Old Caldas region. Its influence is also wide in Antioquia and areas of Putumayo and Norte de Santander, where guerrilla operations and colonization areas coexist. In the urban centers it had some tradition since the 1970s in the cities, especially in Medellín. The EPL signed a cease-fire agreement with the Belisario Betancur government in 1984 that, like the FARC, it used to spread into new areas and increase the number of combatants, taking advantage of the lack of initiative by the public force against them.The EPL's military actions resumed in the second half of 1985, after the M-19 seized the Palace of Justice and the assassination of Oscar William Calvo.
According to the informative bulletin of the insurgent movement "Colombia Popular", what President Belisario did in 1984 was a bold act, since he managed to divide the guerrilla groups, decreed a general amnesty for political prisoners, among them many guerrilla leaders, and seeks direct negotiations with the armed movement. This is why In 1984, the FARC-EP, the M-19 and the EPL entered into a truce, while the ELN (and two other small organizations) rejected the proposal that, according to them, will lead to the demobilization of the popular movement.
Socialists, communists and ex-FARC-EP militants give life to the political organization “Unión Patriótica”. EPL sympathizers present themselves as "Popular Front" in municipal elections. And the opponents of the truce make up the political movement A Luchar.
1984 is the birth date of the cruelest para-state terrorist movement in the world. An alliance of the military, landowners, secret services, and drug traffickers raise hundreds of paramilitary groups that, unlike the Central American death squads, are not limited to political assassination and massacre. They exercise true territorial power. In dozens of Colombian municipalities, the paramilitaries begin to control daily life. Puerto Boyacá in Magdalena Medio (center of the country) and the cattle areas of Córdoba (Atlantic Coast) become paramilitary states within a state of pseudo-democracy.
In the mid-1980s, the main leaders of the left were assassinated, such as the president of the Patriotic Union, Jaime Pardo Leal, and the political spokesmen of the M-19 and the EPL, at that time in truce. The army permanently harasses the guerrilla camps, thus violating the truce agreement. At the same time, the indiscriminate massacres against trade unionists and peasants in conflict zones began. In this way, the UP has lost more than 2000 deputies, councilors and activists since 1984. In total it is estimated that there have been more than 30,000 deaths due to paramilitary activities, not only popular activists but also homosexuals, prostitutes, petty criminals and children of Street.
Today it is known that the main paramilitary massacres have been directed directly by the army. The documents of human rights organizations and of the Colombian justice system, based on the testimonies of different paramilitary leaders, blame such important generals as Jesús Gil Colorado (head of the army until 1994) and Farouck Yanine Díaz (first head of the V Brigade in Bucaramanga and later a teacher at the Inter-American Defense School in Washington).
It is these conditions of dirty war and military harassment that soon lead to the end of the peace process. After a year of truce, the M-19 and the EPL returned to armed activity in 1985 because they did not see a real disposition of the government for a democratization of the country.
The National Guerilla Coordination is formed, made up mainly of the M-19, the EPL and the ELN. In 1987 the FARC joined this initiative of unity and the Simón Bolívar Guerrilla Coordinator emerged. Since the government cannot present social solutions in the 1980s, the armed struggle is spreading. The ELN, for example, which had about 4 fronts in the early 1980s, surpassed 30 guerrilla fronts in 1990. Despite having a totally different strategy, the FARC-EP is also experiencing impressive growth. In the same period, they reached 50 fronts, starting from about 20 in 1980.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war, the Marxist political project of the Colombian guerrillas came to an end. However, this, which has led to the end of the Marxist guerrillas in the world, has not yet reached Colombia. The reality is that the rest of the world, where there are conflicts today, are trying to solve peacefully. Fidel Castro himself recognized that in today's world there are no conditions to seek change through armed struggle. However, Colombia has very particular situations. The guerrilla has been in existence for half a century. A whole culture of violence has developed in our country. Additionally, a new destabilizing factor has appeared, such as drug trafficking,that has given the guerrillas a second wind and has come to fuel them when ideological approaches and international support from countries that no longer offer it today stopped feeding them.
Another aspect to highlight in such an important process has to do with the globalization of the world, which has also led to the internationalization of the guerrillas with the following consequences: first, naturally Moscow is over, the cold war is over, it is over. even Cuban support. Cuba already stated that it did not support the armed struggle in Latin America.
In particular, the M-19 was greatly weakened between 1985 and 1989. It lost most of its leaders and sought unconditional negotiations with the government. 1991 demobilized and became a political party, the "Democratic Alliance-M-19" which in the first elections reached just over 10% of the votes.
In 1991, efforts were made to approach peace talks initiated by the Gaviria administration. A process of talks was started in '91 in Caracas, where great advances were made, because a peace agenda was even agreed upon, because a methodology was structured so that a ceasefire verification could be carried out.
Thus, incidents have been occurring that in one way or another have truncated expectations of peace until reaching the current situation. The course of the talks and peace projects I will enunciate in more detail in the final work in the chapter corresponding to the peace process. As well as I will deepen the totality of the topics contained in the work.
ERRORS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE COLOMBIAN GUERRILLA
But in Colombia, the guerrillas have made a serious mistake, especially in recent times, and it is that they have not done enough to keep the peasantry on their side, on the contrary, they have been displaced from their original place of residence to other areas, leaving everything that had been built up to now abandoned and looking for luck in urban centers where he has to dedicate himself to informal employment (if he can be employed in something) selling thousands of "chécheres" in the parks and streets.
Worse has happened with the people who live in urban centers, because the press in Colombia is in the hands of power groups, the common people, the only thing they know about the guerrillas is that they took over such a population, or that he kidnapped so many parishioners in a church, or that he is holding so many police and military hostages, or that he kidnapped the passengers of an airplane, or that he performs miraculous fishing checkpoints, or that he extorts through ticket sales and kidnapping or that they were the authors of a massacre and finally a number of cruel and ruthless acts that make the people who live in the cities not even think about what the guerrillas are promulgating, but instead condemn and repudiate them as a consequence of the acts committed by this.
For this reason, the guerrillas do not have sufficient legitimacy to be able to think of a power option with the support of civil society.
On the other hand, the guerrillas have no representation of the interests of any sector of Colombian society except their own. But this has not happened by chance. As we saw previously, there were many circumstances that affected the finances of the guerrilla groups and we also saw the recurring forms of financing of some of the groups, including drug trafficking, mass kidnappings and other forms that have made the government lose popularity. guerrilla, or rather, they have made it gain negative popularity.
In this sense, an important role is played by the paramilitaries that have made people find themselves in the midst of a crossfire between the guerrillas and the paramilitaries. “Both the guerrillas and their adversaries demand loyalty and solidarity to the cause that each defends as the most just. A diabolical circle: either the retaliation of the guerrillas if they collaborate with their enemy or the counter-retaliation of the armed forces if they do the same. In this dialectic of retaliation, counter-retaliation, guerrilla relations with the population are essential: either they find spontaneous support (ideological or out of interest), or they seek it through intimidation "
It is clear that the armed movement lacks legitimacy, the power of convocation and fails to represent the interests of the popular sectors. The forms of adherence of the population to an institution or a political actor are, fundamentally, two: freedom or fear. By intimidation or fear, obedience for safety is achieved. Anyone who dispenses with society ends up seeking or obtaining obedience, not participation.
On the other hand, in the country, especially in the last decade, there has been an enormous multiplication of violence and regional conflicts that have reduced the transparency of violence of a clear political nature.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. "The Discomfort in Culture" Human Sciences National University. Medellin.
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