Forwarded from Anthony (peace process in Colombia)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

48 hours has turned into about 96 hours. But, tommorrow night at 9:30 PM,
Colombian time (the same as New York City at this time of year), the
government of Colombia plans to retake control of the 'despeje' - unless ...

People here in Bogotá are very, very, very cynical about the peace process
and about the war.

The street level consensus -in my very, very, very, informal opinion poll
(but it does include a sample of about 100 people in all urban social
classes, weighted mroe heavily toward the working class and the
professional petty bourgeois), is that nothing is going to change here
except the headlines in the newspapers, and the bank accounts of the
politicians. War is not war, it is a business. The generals rake in the
kick-backs, the Senators rake in the kick-backs, and make money from their
farms where they grow coca, and so do the paramilitaries and the FARC. Arms
companies in the USA make money off of Plan Colombia - and everyone is
happy - except for the little people who the paramilitaries murder and the
FARC kidnaps.

Popular social consciousness of course is not a very accurate measure of
social, economic, and political reality. (And my measure of popular social
consciousness is no doubt not so accurate anyway.)

Unless. Unless there is a new deal that will allow negotiations to
continue. The only new deal the government says it will accept is one in
which the FARC explicitly agress to government controls over who enters and
leaves the despeje. And this is, or course, something the FARC can not
really do.

The FARC says it plans to organize a formal ceremony to hand the despeje
back to the government, just like the ceremony when the government formally
handed the despeje over to the FARC.

Meanwhile the paramilitaries say they plan to move into the despeje the
minute the FARC moves out.

The army says they will take control and no one will harm the civilian
population.

The army also says they are tracking the movements of all FARC units with
infared censors from satelittes and spy planes.

Beneath the cynicism here in Bogotá, the right wing is growing and is
happy, and everyone else is afraid.

On the faces of the common people interviewed in the streets of San Vicente
de Caguan (main town in the despeje) you can see the fear. The same is true
of the faces of the spokespeople of the FARC.

The FARC encampments in the despeje were emptied last night. TV news crews
are going from one to another showing the evacuated sites.

TV news crews are also spending a lot of time interviewing 18 year old
soldiers in the backs of troop transport planes and trucks. The young
soldiers are whooping it up, braggin about the FARC leaders they plan to kill.

More likely, a lot of them will be dead, if things continue to move in the
direction they are going.

Be sure to watch the news tomorrow night.

All the best, Anthony

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org


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