A worker repairs the damage to the presidential palace caused by a mortar launched during the inauguration ceremony for President Alvaro Uribe, in Bogota, Colombia Friday Aug. 9, 2002. At least one shell hit the palace on Wednesday during the attack blamed on rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC. (AP Photo/John Moore)

Eleven days before the presidential elections of May 26, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army declared in a public communiquй that: “no matter who should be the next elected president, they were willing to re-initiate the dialogues that had been abruptly broken off by and under the direct responsibility of Dr. Pastrana.”

The conditions this belligerent force demands are minimal, but fundamental:

1. “Clear out” (state authority) of the departments of Caqueta and Putumayo;
2. Return to the agenda for change towards the new Colombia that was being advanced with Pastrana;
3. Withdraw the labels “terrorists” and “narcoterrorists” by which agents of the government try to discredit those fighting for social causes; and
4. Take serious measures against those involved in any official paramilitary activities.

The proposal drove the candidates at that time, the generals, representatives of the clergy, the business establishment, political analysts, party officials and social commentators crazy. But, what was it that provoked their angry reaction?

It seems they are greatly annoyed that the FARC-EP should insist that as long as the government continues its policy of dialogue under fire, they require sufficient guarantees to maintain the security of their commanders, ambassadors and personalities, and to offer the same security to the government’s representatives assigned to advance the conversations, and that these should necessarily be located where the meetings take place.

They think the request for the two departments to be “cleared” is disproportionate. Unacceptable. They go back to the same arguments as when that request was made for the first time during the Samper government, to “clear out”of the municipality of Uribe in the department of Meta, and then more recently for San Vicente, Uribe, Macarena, Vista Hermosa and Mesetas.

They are obsessed and spooked by the idea that the FARC-EP might want to “balkanize” Colombia, imposing the imaginary “Southern Republic” under the stale old thesis of Independent Republics already utilized for the aggression against Marquetalia in 1964.

A rebel trooper standing guard during the peace negotiations at Los Posos, Caqueta. Photo Jason P.Howe, 2002.

They have not been able to swallow the fact that the extermination or death blow the warmongers so hoped they would inflict on the FARC in the Caguan, was but a vain illusion, and that after almost four months of their military offensive, undertaken on a big scale, it has been a complete failure for them. The extension of the war to the entire national territory, including the urban centers, is a situation that is ever more a real possibility, that in midst of the armed confrontation, draws a new map of the Colombian political reality.

To stop the war there has to be dialogue and the temporary “clearing”will open the gates to understanding without putting the territorial integrity at risk which they claim worries them so much.

They would like to see the FARC dialoguing out there somewhere… in a far-off corner of the world or perhaps inside some hot tents in an African desert oasis or in the frigid north, but not here in Colombia, under the mantle of the tropical jungle that witnessed their birth and protects them. They forget that their demand is backed by undeniable evidence of their political and military accomplishments. They lack the largeness of mind to see that the most pressing problem in Colombia is whether there will be war or peace. The condition calling for an area to be “cleared”is a not a lot in view of the threat that looms.

Nor will they be able to take away from what the FARC have accomplished in their 38 years of work together with and as part of the people with remarks made in bad taste or epithets borrowed from their international mentors or certain state and government functionaries. “We are a political-military organization and insist on being treated as such. It is not a lot to ask.”

The agenda for change for the new Colombia was one of the great achievements of the truncated process and it deserves being taken up anew and deepened. There are within it valuable elements for reconciliation and the search for Peace with Social Justice.

As for the measures to be taken against official paramilitarism, the Constitution and laws provide the elements for rounding up its promoters, participants, financers, propagandists and collaborators.

President Pastrana, the Prosecutor’s office and many national and international organizations are familiar with the long list of members of the armed forces, producers’ associations, political parties, “respectable” personalities, mafiosos, landowners and cattle ranchers who have hitched their fate to this death machine. It would be simple to untangle its tentacles and punish the guilty parties if there existed on the part of the Colombian State the political will to do so. From their graves, those who were massacred accuse and await justice.

Having emerged victorious from the electoral contest, Dr. Álvaro Uribe Vélez has “thrown out” a new proposal to reinitiate the dialogues with those he calls “the violent ones”. We will speak more about it later. For the moment, we insist, without arrogance, that the proposal of the FARC-People’s Army is a serious, viable and realistic one.

Translation on English by: elbarcino@laneta.apc.org