BACKGROUND TO COLOMBIA
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When we tell people that we’re working with social organisations in Colombia, a few of us have received raised eyebrows and wary comments about swarthy men with big moustaches, drug-cartels, kidnapping and even (from the more musically-minded) Shakira.

Suffice to say that Colombia is the subject of rather a lot of misperceptions. It is true that the country is the scene of enormous amounts of violence, but the roots of the humanitarian crisis have very little to do with drugs or extortion by mythical ‘narcoguerillas’ (and even less to do with poor Shakira).

Meanwhile, it has become a mantra of many human rights and solidarity groups that Colombia is ‘the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist’.

It is true that unionised workers in Colombia face terrible repression. Many have been murdered, and even more threatened by state-linked paramilitary groups for trying to obtain decent contracts and working conditions (1). But to focus on this alone might be to suggest that Colombia was somehow pathologically violent, as if trade unionists in other countries weren’t also systematically repressed. It might also lead to the misperception that Colombian people are either aggressors or victims - obscuring the country’s creative wealth of social struggles and proposals for alternatives, and thriving cultural life.

So what is going on in Colombia? Why is it such a dangerous place to organise a trade union? Why does the country have one of the highest numbers of internally displaced people within its borders? And why, indeed, are an ever-increasing number of multinational corporations facing charges of complicity with violence against workers and communities in Colombia?

To understand the humanitarian crisis in Colombia, you not only need to consider the internal dynamics of the conflict, but also have to look beyond the country’s boarders to broader processes of globalization of the economic and political model favoured by the World Bank, IMF and their state and corporate allies. As the Colombian writers Humberto Cárdenas and Alvaro Marín put it:

‘The political economy of globalization is expressed violently in Colombia, as in many other countries. However, Colombia stands out, not only because of the atrocious war that displaces populations, but also because of strong connections between transnational projects and a violent governing elite which, supported by “international cooperation”, imposes the projects of transnational companies by force.’(2)

Let us explain…

Armed and social conflict in Colombia
Although Colombia is officially ‘the oldest democracy in Latin America’, it is also the site of a complex and longstanding conflict involving an array of armed actors. On the one hand, and more commonly talked about internationally, are the left-wing guerrilla groups which were formed in second half of the twentieth century in response to social injustice and violence against the poor majority by Colombia’s landowning elites (3).

On the other hand you have the official state armed forces and right-wing paramilitary death squads, who are responsible for the vast majority of human rights violations(4) and whose institutionalised links have been extensively documented by national and international human rights bodies(5). These paramilitary groups were originally set up by wealthy landowners in the early 1980’s, supposedly as a form of self-defence against extortion by the guerrillas(6). However, the paramilitaries have from early on worked alongside the army as part of a policy of what many Colombian authors describe as ‘state terrorism’ against peaceful forms of protest and political activism against social injustice(7). Since the early 1990’s military-paramilitary violence has also been instrumental to imposing what is often called ‘neoliberalism’ - the political and economic model associated with globalization and the demands of international institutions like the World Bank and IMF(8).

With the active collusion of the armed forces, paramilitary groups terrorize and forcibly displace local populations, take control of an area and repopulate it with new social groups who won’t oppose a neoliberal economic model. This strategy has been publicly acknowledged by prominent paramilitaries. For example, Carlos Castaño, one of the leaders of Colombia’s largest paramilitary group, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, described a three-phase paramilitary model along these lines: 1) ‘liberation’ of large areas from the country from the guerrillas and their supporters (anyone who raises a voice in dissent being counted as a supporter) and imposing an authoritarian social structure; 2) ‘bringing wealth to the region’ through ‘development’ projects carried out with the knowledge and support of government bodies; 3) ‘legitimation and consolidation’ - one any possible dissent has been eliminated, ‘the paramilitaries believe they will cease to be a “loose cannon of the State”. There they will have put in place the necessary structures for the victorious expansion of national and multinational capitalism and the ‘modernising’ State will be able to install itself with the cooperation of the private sector, non-governmental organisations and the “organised” communities’(9).

This military and paramilitary strategy has been reinforced by military aid from the United States. In 2000, Bill Clinton approved a $1.3billion military aid package, under the premises of a ‘war on drugs’ - despite the extensively-documented links between the military and paramilitaries and the fact that the US Drug Enforcement Agency itself recognised the paramilitaries as the main drug-traffickers(10). Military aid has continued under George Bush, under the rubric of the ‘war on terror’ with the US ‘now providing military aid for direct use in counter-insurgency operations specifically to protect US-operated oil installations’, such as the Caño Limon oil pipeline in the department of Arauca(11). As Amnesty International have noted, a central part of these counter-insurgency operations - as with counter-insurgency operations elsewhere - is the use of paramilitaries ‘to undermine perceived civilian support for the guerrillas by terror tactics such as massacres, selective killings and threats, mainly against human rights defenders, social and trade union activists, journalists, teachers and health workers’(12). Using declassified information, documentation from US government agencies and human rights reports, British academic Doug Stokes has analysed how the US has funded and supported counter-insurgency operations in Colombia throughout the twentieth century, with the only significant differences being been the shift in rhetoric from ‘anti-communism’ to ‘counter-drugs’ and ‘counter-terrorism’(13). Behind this, the aims of US military aid have been and ‘continue to be the preservation and defence of a (neo)-liberal international order and the destruction of social forces or states considered inimical to this order’(14).

There is substantial evidence to suggest that various multinational corporations have been involved in funding paramilitary groups to create a more profitable business environment by terrorizing those resisting the companies’ activities(15). Other, less well known but significant, players in the violence are the shadowy private security companies, employed by multinational corporations. For example, there is strong evidence that the US security contractor Airscan, operating in conjunction with Occidental Petroleum and the Colombian Air force, was involved in an attack on the village of Santo Domingo in December 1999, in which seventeen civilians, six of them children, were killed by a cluster bomb(16). Similarly, BP has used a subsidiary of the British private security company Defence Systems to provide counter-insurgency training (described as ‘lethal’ by one employee) to the Colombian army and police and to collect intelligence on community leaders who opposed the environmental destruction caused by oil exploration in the department of Casanare (17).

It’s probably clear from all of this that behind Colombia’s armed conflict is a more deeply-rooted social conflict, which relates to the use and distribution of the benefits from Colombia’s fertile land and wealth of natural resources like oil, coal, gold, emeralds and water. To give one example, whilst social organizations in Colombia have a variety of different proposals for grass-roots sovereignty over food production and consumption (see below), elites supporting the globalization project promote a system in which food production is controlled by multinationals from its seeds to it’s distribution and support projects involving monocultures of crops like coffee, flowers, bananas and increasingly African Palm. Despite the terrible violence involved in the imposition of these projects, more people die from the effects of hunger in Colombia than the armed conflict (18).

Colombia in global context
As Cárdenas and Marín point out in the quote above, Colombia is far from being the only country in which ‘[t]he political economy of globalization is expressed violently’. The reasons for Colombia’s particularly atrocious dirty war and ‘violent governing elite’ have a lot to do with the history and geography of the country - such the fact that state territorial control has been difficult historically because of the fact that the country is divided by three mountain ranges and two major rivers (19).

However, Colombia has also long been a darling of the World Bank (20) and it is important to understand the links between the development model being pushed by the Bank, alongside other international institutions, and violence. What’s going on in Colombia is a particularly vigorous imposition of a model that is being pushed upon peoples the world over. This much-maligned ‘neoliberal’ model essentially involves bringing more and more spaces into the ambit of the market and profit-making - be they physical spaces such as collective lands or areas of life such as health, education and cultural production.

David Harvey, in this book The New Imperialism, describes these increasingly global processes as ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (21). The pursuit of more and more new spaces for profitable investment have led to more and more things being made into commodities (i.e. things that can be bought and sold) and handed over to private ownership. This explains why natural resources - such as land, water and even seeds which have been used for generations by local populations - are made into commodities and sold off a comparatively low cost to corporations, who can then maximise their profit. It also explains why labour contracts are becoming more precarious - by reforming the laws regarding labour rights, corporations have to spend less money on paying wages and benefits to workers, making their operations more profitable. Communities are dispossessed of their land, water resources and rights to use seeds whilst workers are dispossessed of their labour rights. As a result, capitalists and corporations are able to accumulate more profit - hence, ‘accumulation by dispossession’. Harvey points out that, since states supposedly have a monopoly on the use of force, states they play a crucial role in the dispossession that is central to globalization (22).

The Colombian anthropologist Arturo Escobar has a similar understanding of the use of force in globalization. Escobar notes that modernity and capitalist ‘development’ have always involved violence, since they require what he describes as a ‘continuous conquest of territories and peoples and their ecological and cultural transformation’ (23). This is even more so today: with the market and technical solutions for ‘development’ taking priority over just about everything else, including peoples’ claims to rights as citizens, workers and so on (24). Whilst a small minority enjoy escalating wealth, the majority - such the urban unemployed, rural communities and displaced people - are completely excluded from these benefits. The result is what Escobar calls a ‘global regime of selective inclusion for the minority and hyper-exclusion for the majority’, which always has a military component, for when the market and technology are not enough for the administration of territories, peoples and resources in line with neoliberal order, this order is increasingly imposed ‘through the management of asymmetrical and spatialised violence, territorial control, sub-contracted massacres and “cruel little wars”’ (25).

Seen in this global context, Colombia is less an exception than a powerful example of violent globalization. The dynamics of accumulation by dispossession and the ever-increasing polarisation between rich and poor, included and excluded, are graphically illustrated in Colombia (26). Whilst the rich live in gated communities and enjoy the protection of the state as well as private security and insurance schemes, the majority are increasingly dispossessed of their land and natural resources, and of those of forms of protection that the state used to provide - at least to urban populations - such as public hospitals. Workers have also been disposed of previously-existing labour rights, with new legislation eliminating overtime payments, increasing the length of the working week, and making it easier for employers to sack workers (27). Meanwhile, labour contracts have become casualised by means of a policy of ‘strategic alliances’ between workers and corporations, under which ‘cooperatives’ of workers are forced to bid for contracts while covering the costs of equipment, healthcare and so on. This has become a central part of corporations’ strategies of cost-reduction and is promoted by the Colombian government and paramilitaries with the support of the World Bank and other international funders (28).

That this model is imposed largely by force is not just a symptom of Colombia’s specific historical circumstances. Neoliberal globalization and the relentless accumulation by dispossession that goes with it are inherently violent processes and, as Escobar notes, it may well be that Colombia prefigures situations that are likely to become more common elsewhere.

President Uribe’s neo-fascist project
None of this is helped by Colombia currently having a far-rightwing president, Alvaro Uribe, who came to power in 2002. Uribe is the son of a political broker and real-estate intermediary for narcotraffickers and, as Governor of the department of Antioquia from 1995-7 was involved in promoting armed self defence groups (29). These groups were made illegal after being involved in several massacres and subsequently went on to join the paramilitaries of the AUC.

Although Colombia supposedly has a democratic electoral process (murders of left-leaning candidates aside) (30), the academics Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Mauricio García Villegas describe Colombia as a ‘laboratory of fascist sociabilities in formally democratic political surroundings, or of absent dictatorship’ (31). Santos and García describe the country as displaying what they call ‘social fascism’ because, despite Colombia official being a democracy, it doesn’t really mean much in practice to say that the majority of the population have citizenship rights, especially when even those rights that the population did have are being confiscated through the neoliberal project. On top of this, instead of protecting much of the population - which the state is supposedly meant to do under democratic theory - the state is actually a predator for many Colombians, who live under the threat of state and para-state violence (32).

Santos and García made their analysis in 2001, before Uribe’s election. Since then, the Colombian state has become even more of a threat for much of the population. Uribe got in on an election pledge to end the internal armed conflict by military means. Although, before forming his own party “The U”, he was previously a prominent member of the Liberal Party, one of the two parties that have shared power since the mid 19th century, his success was on the back of failed peace negotiations and increased poverty as a result of neoliberal reforms that had led to increased dissatisfaction with the traditional parties.

However, as Forrest Hylton points out, Uribe’s election signified a political victory for the paramilitary organisations in Colombia and an escalation of the armed conflict (33). Although Uribe’s government began a ‘peace process’ with the paramilitaries, this has been widely criticised as guaranteeing impunity for perpetrators of crimes against humanity and does nothing to challenge the economic, military and political power of paramilitarism in Colombia (34). Many supposedly ‘demobilized’ paramilitaries have formed new groups called ‘Black Eagles’, which continue to threaten, murder and torture social activists and their families. The ‘peace-process’ has backfired on the government to some extent, however, in the form of an on-going scandal resulting from demobilizing paramilitaries’ testimonies providing proof for what Colombian social movements have claimed for decades - that the connection between the state and paramilitaries go far deeper than the close relationship between the army and paramilitaries and penetrate to the heart of government. Paramilitary testimonies have revealed tight links between paramilitary groups and numerous prominent politicians, with even more questions being raised about Uribe’s own connections as a result. Meanwhile, since Uribe has been in power, he has pursued a neoliberal agenda with even more gusto than his predecessors, amplifying much of the violence that goes alongside these reforms.

In the framework of a rather ill-named policy called ‘Democratic Security’, Uribe’s government have stepped up military confrontation against the guerrilla and, as usual, against any social organizations who protest against government policy (35). This policy has involved the strengthening of the police and armed forces, the recruitment of ‘peasant soldiers’ in the countryside and extensive surveillance of the population, including networks of ‘citizen informers’ - something which, as the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has pointed out, is a violation of International Humanitarian Law since it involves civilians in the armed conflict (36). ‘Democratic Security’ is now notorious for leading to an increase in violence against civilians by state forces, particularly torture and mass detention (37). The policy has also given the green light to the military to carry out extra-judicial executions of civilians. Since the military are now given targets of numbers of guerrilla that they should kill, and it’s much easier to meet these demanding targets by killing unarmed civilians, rural inhabitants who are not even involved in social organisation are increasingly being murdered by members of the army. For example, some of us from Espacio helped organize an international human rights mission to the department of Casanare in summer 2007, where we interviewed family members of a number of people who’d been killed by the army and then had their clothing changed or corpses tampered with, in order to make them look more like guerrilla (38).

Resistance and alternatives
Although it’s difficult to build alternatives when the dominant political and economic model is being imposed through such enormous levels of violence, the activities of social movements in Colombia go far beyond simply denouncing the human rights situation. Here are a few (far from exhaustive) examples…

Many groups in Colombia have a long history of struggle for regional and cultural autonomy and their own models of development. Numerous indigenous groups are resisting the multinationals’ onslaught in defence of their own territory and culture. Similarly, Afro-Colombian communities on Colombia’s pacific have a sophisticated analysis of the relationship between Western models of development and violence, displacement and the erosion of cultures and are struggling to defend their social and cultural autonomy, as well as the lives and livelihoods of other groups. Campesinos (peasant farmers) are also involved in alternative proposals at a local or regional level. For example, the Social Organisations of Arauca, have oppose the oil companies in Arauca with their own ‘Regional Equilibrium Plan’, a societal model - already in process before the state and multinational companies became interested in the region - based on equilibrium between different social groups and between humans and the environment.

Diverse Colombian organizations are also currently coordinating a series of public hearings of the People’s Permanent Tribunal into multinational corporations’ responsibility for crimes against humanity in Colombia. The People’s Permanent Tribunal is an international alternative justice mechanism which aims to establish legal responsibilities in situations of mass human rights violations where there has been no response from official institutions. Although the Tribunal can’t actually sentence anyone, the judges are experts in national and international law and work within that framework in order to highlight the truth of the crimes and their causes, so they can’t just be covered up and erased from historical memory by the governments and companies who are responsible. So far, hearings have been held into crimes by multinationals in the food sector (Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Chiquita bananas), mining sector (Drummond, Anglo Gold - check others), oil and gas sector (BP, Occidental Petroleum and Respol) and on the issue of biodiversity. The hearings are also spaces for discussion of alternative models in each of these sectors.

For example, whilst the boycott of Coca-Cola, launched by the Colombian food-workers union SINALTRAINAL with the support of numerous other organizations in protest against murders of trade unionists from Coke bottling plants, is well known internationally, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social movement activity with respect to the food industry. Many organizations, representing different sectors of Colombian society - indigenous groups, campesinos, afro-Colombians, urban populations, workers, students and so on - are working for alternatives to a food system controlled by multinational corporations, for an end to hunger and for communities’ sovereignty over their own food production and consumption. SINALTRAINAL itself has, since it was founded, been campaigning not only for the rights of workers but for a completely different food system, based on local-level circuits of food cultivation, commercialization and consumption, and worked together with campesino organizations to put this into practice.

The oil hearing of the People’s Permanent Tribunal was also a space for discussion around building a social movement focused on energy production and provision. As well as campaigning for popular sovereignty over natural resources (a concept different from traditional socialist demands for national sovereignty, as it recognises the diversity of Colombian peoples and the autonomous models of society and development coming from different groups), this nascent movement is also thinking about alternative forms of energy production that might help avoid increased social and ecological destruction as a result of climate chaos. In October 2007, Colombian organizations also held tribunal on Climate Justice.

Public universities in Colombia are another site of struggle. Colombian universities have historically been places for social criticism, debate and the formulation of alternative models of society in collaboration with different social sectors in the country. The concept of ‘University Autonomy’ - i.e. the idea that the university is independent of both government and commercial interests, developed centuries ago at the University of Oxford and enshrined in Article 69 of the Colombian Constitution - is now being eroded by neoliberal reforms which seek to make education and research subservient to the market (39) Although in universities, as elsewhere, these reforms are being imposed violently (40), students and staff continue to resist and defend the university as a space for critical through and social struggle.

Poets, writers, intellectuals, musicians and artists in Colombia are also harnessing their creative talents for peace and social justice, as part of a burgeoning Cultural Movement that aims to be ‘the eyes, the ears and the critical reflection of our reality, and a bridge with the social movements that are demonstrating in the streets against war, social inequality, privatization of public education, the exploitation of our natural heritage and the Free Trade Agreement with the United States’ (41). As far as we know, Shakira is not taking part.

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