Ciudad Bolívar

Paloquemao, Bogotá

2012-01-12T12:02:00.000-05:00

Cinemacinco 'Campesino'

de 'La República de Alegría'

Paloquemao, Los Martires, Bogotá

América Latina

2012-01-01T01:00:00.000-05:00

'Latinoamérica'

Calle 13

(con Totó la Momposina, Susana Baca & María Rita)

Bomba Estéreo

2008-05-31T09:00:00.000-05:00

Bomba Estéreo 'Fuego'

Colombia

Paraguay

2008-05-14T06:44:00.007-05:00

Bolívar takes Ascunción

Alianza presidential candidate Fernando Lugo takes 40.8 per cent to defeat the derechista Partido Colorado for the first time since 1947.

Más Chavista que nunca!

2007-12-06T20:51:00.000-05:00

En 2006, el Presidente Chávez ganó las elecciones presidenciales con un 62 por ciento de los votos, obteniendo el apoyo de 7.309.000 personas. Un año después, la Reforma Constitucional del Presidente Chávez sólo logró 4.380.000 votos a favor, lo que a simple vista denota que unas 3 millones de personas que habían votado por el Presidente Chávez en 2006 decidieron no votar por su propuesta de Reforma Constitucional.

En contraste, en 2006 el más cercano competidor de Chávez, el opositor Manuel Rosales, obtuvo 4.292.000 votos. En 2007, quienes se opusieron a su propuesta de Reforma fueron 4.504.000 personas, doscientas mil personas más que quienes votaron por la oposición en 2006.

Venezuelan political activists debate the revolution’s direction.

¿Qué se va hacer? Para salir de esta situación y que el proceso revolucionario supere este momento y pueda profundizarse, verdaderamente todo el poder debe pasar al pueblo y a sus organizaciones.
El Congreso del Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) debe transformarse en la más democrática instancia donde todos podamos opinar, proponer, criticar y decidir lo mejor para la revolución bolivariana, sin restricciones y sin injerencias burocráticas que impidan una libre discusión.
Tenemos inmensa confianza en que cientos de miles de compatriotas podemos seguir con el proyecto socialista y enfrentar en ese camino cualquier intento que la derecha pretenda realizar. Pero a la confianza hay que acompañarla de unidad y de organización, construyendo un espacio común para debatir todos estos temas.

What is to be done? To leave this situation and ensure that the revolutionary process overcomes this moment and can deepen, it is essential that all power should pass to the people and their organisations.
The Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) congress should become a more democratic organisation where all could think, propose, criticise and decide the best course for the Bolivarian revolution, without the restrictions or bureaucratic interference that prevents free discussion.
We have immense confidence that hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans will continue advancing the socialist project, and will confront on this road any attacks the right may try to make. But this confidence must be accompanied by unity and organisation, and the construction of a space to debate all these themes.
Stalin Pérez, Vilma Vivas, Marco García e Ismael Hernández, Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT) sindicalistas, Caracas

A estas alturas del tiempo que lleva el Presidente favoreciendo a la gente de menores recursos y proponiendo acciones para seguir ayudandolos como es el caso de los Consejos Comunales, creo que la abstención obedece a la comodidad, falta de madurez política e ingratitud de la gente, pero un problema real es la situación en los barrios con visos de criminalidad y pandillerismo.
Falta realizar, como rutina, talleres de ideología que explique y confronte ventajas y desventajas entre socialismo y capitalismo. Algunos sólo quieren vivir de la revolución y por ello les da lo mismo votar o no. Así que los abstencionistas asuman su irresponsabilidad.

For so long the President has been favouring people with scarce resources and proposing actions to continue helping the poorest such as through the Consejos Comunales, and I believe that the abstention was a result of complacency, a lack of political maturity, and ingratitude, but the real problem is the situation of criminality and gangsterism in the barrios.
(The campaign) failed to organize regular political debates to explain and compare the advantages and disadvantages between socialism and capitalism. Some just wanted to take from the revolution, and for these, it doesn’t matter whether they vote or not. As such, those who abstained have to accept their irresponsibility.
Dalia Pérez, Barquisimeto

Aspiro que el presidente haga lo que más el contraataque… ahí se crece… me parece que en la campaña hubo exceso de confianza de parte del políticos, pero ahora debemos avanzar al ataque.

I hope the President counter attacks… it seems to me that the politicians were overconfident in the campaign, but now we should advance on the attack.

José Rojas, Barrio El Junquito, Caracas

Tenemos que ver que pasa con ese Chavismo Light que se quedo en su casa, tenemos que ver que esta pasando en el pueblo.
Además tenemos que demostrar que no es político solo el que habla en medios y crea esa mitificada opinión publica, sino todos y todas las venezolanas y venezolanos, todos tenemos que estar inmiscuidos en problemas políticos.
Tenemos que organizarnos, salir a las calles, construir esa comunidad, esos consejos… tenemos que velar por nuestro presidente y llevar a las urnas a esos abstinentes confundidos.
La lucha sigue camaradas - esto no ha terminado, y el que lo crea así, no merece ser llamado revolucionario.

We have to find out what happened with this Chavismo Lite that stayed at home, we have to see what is going on with the people.
Furthermore, we have to make sure that its not just politicians in the media influencing this mystical public opinion, but that all Venezuelans are involved in politics.
We have to organize ourselves, go into the streets, construct this community, these consejos… we have to respect our President and bring the confused abstainers to the polls.
The fight continues comrades - this hasn’t finished, and he who doesn’t believe that doesn’t deserve to be called a revolutionary.
Pablo Trinidad, Cua, Venezuela

Este es un claro mensaje a la oposición venezolana, que indica que no tienen nada asegurado, que no fue una victoria contundente y mucho menos un final a la esperanza de un nuevo furturo económico y político más justo.
Nada se ha perdido, continuemos, avancemos.

This is a clear message that the Venezuelan opposition has nothing assured, that it wasn’t a convincing victory, and much less an end to the hope of a new, more just, economic and political future.
Nothing has been lost, we will continue and we will advance.
Ángela, Barrio 23 de enero, Caracas

Creo que una de las razones fue la dispersion de esfuerzos por un lado con la corformacion del PSUV y por el otro la discusion de la reforma.
De seis millones de inscritos solo asistian a las reuniones un millon y piquito… el PSUV no estaba organizado, y especialmente para esta confrontacion no se encontraba debidamente preparado.
Creo en el PSUV, creo que es necesario, pero tambien creo que ha podido posponerse su conformacion hasta pasar el referendum.

I think that one of the reasons (for the defeat) was the scattered efforts to organize the PSUV on one side, and on the other, the discussion about the reform.
Of six million members, only one million and a bit attend meetings… the PSUV has not been organized, and this confrontation especially found it poorly prepared.
I believe in the PSUV, I believe it is necessary, but also I think it was a mistake to leave the organisation of the party until after the referendum.
Francisco Acuña, Valencia

Los dirigentes sindicales y los trabajadores tenemos que salir a movilizarnos y a conquistar hoy las 6 horas de trabajo y la inclusión de los informales.
Nuestro proceso revolucionario necesita y se merece un cambio profundo y urgente. Ya no hay tiempo ni posibilidades de cambios superficiales. Hay que abrir el debate de las grandes decisiones políticas y económicas con las bases, con las organizaciones sociales, populares y políticas del proceso, y necesitamos un periódico revolucionario.
Hay que terminar con los funcionarios elegidos a dedo que no reflejan más que sus intereses personales. Replantearse el rol de los Ministros del Poder Popular, para que todas las decisiones referidas a cada uno sean debatidas y decididas por las bases involucradas.
Hay que terminar con los salarios de funcionarios que viven como en Venezuela Saudita, que compran propiedades y duermen en lujosos hoteles. Eso nada tiene que ver con un proyecto socialista, y las bases reclamamos la salida de todos los involucrados en este proceso, la renuncia de estos ineficientes e inescrupulosos funcionarios.
Hay que darle paso a los que trabajan por el proceso, a los que se sacrifican a diario desde las bases, a los verdaderos liderazgos obreros y los populares en los barrios, que son parte y reflejo directo de sus sectores sociales.

Union leaders and workers have to take to the streets to mobilize and fight for the 6 hour work day and the inclusion of the workers in the informal sector.
Our revolutionary process requires and deserves a profound and urgent change. There is no time or possibility for superficial changes. A debate on the great political and economic decisions has to be started with the masses, with social, popular and political organisations, and we need a revolutionary newspaper.
There has to be no more appointed functionaries who are interested in their own personal gain. The role of the Ministers of Popular Power must be usurped, so that the decisions referred to them are debated and decided by those who will be affected by these decisions.
There must be no more salaries that allow (state) bureaucrats to live as though in Saudi Venezuela, buying properties and staying in luxurious hotels. This has nothing to do with socialism, and the workers demand that all those involved in this (corruption), all the inefficient and unscrupulous functionaries are fired.
Those who work for the process (the revolution) those that sacrifice each day, the true workers’ leaders and the social leaders in the barrios, that are part of, and reflect the people, have to be involved.
Union Nacional de Trabajadores sindicalistas, Venezuela

La democratización de la comunicación es la vía para que el pueblo participe en la producción y distribución de los mensajes mediáticos, de darse esto no importará que más del 80 por ciento de los medios informativos respondan al modo de producción capitalista. Esta forma revolucionaria de comunicación debe desplegarse desde las bases de quienes apoyan al gobierno - en cada batallón, en cada consejo comunal, en cada pueblo.

Democratisation of communication is the way that the people can participate in the production and distribution of information through the media, and undercut the 80 per cent of the media that reflects the priorities of capitalism.
This revolutionary form of communication should spread from the masses who support the government - from each battalion, in each consejo comunal, in every community.
María Rivas, Barrio Catia, Caracas

No vamos a escuchar al grueso de los opinólogos que han acusado a Chávez de dictador, autócrata, manipulador, gorila o castrocomunista - todos los insultos y calumnias de políticos, tertulianos, columnistas y editorialistas - entonar un mea culpa después de que el Presidente aceptara de inmediato y sin ningún reparo el resultado adverso, pero en dos segundos - ¡derrumbó! - la calumnia mediática fracasó.
¡Ojala mostrara el ejército la misma fidelidad institucional en Colombia, en México!
Es el momento de mimar la capacidad democrática del PSUV, revirtiendo una estrategia que ha primado la cantidad a la calidad y que ha impedido que sea la base quien se encuentre con su verdadero instrumento de emancipación. Es el momento de hacer de la discusión interna un requisito democrático, de multiplicar las disidencias.

We are not going to hear those opinionated commentators who accused Chávez of being a dictator, an autocrat, a manipulator, gorilla or Castrocommunist - all the insults and lies of the politicians, café society, columnists and editorialists - apologise after the President immediately accepted without any objection the adverse result, but in 2 seconds - crash! - the entire media slander collapsed.
If only Colombia or México could show the same confidence and trust in their (electoral) institutions!
This is the moment to attend to the democratic capacity of the PSUV, changing a strategy that had prioritised quantity over quality, and that had hindered the activists from participating. This is the moment to make internal discussion - the multiplicity of dissident opinions - a democratic requisite.
Juan Carlos Monedero, Madrid, España

¿Qué ganó la oposición? No mucho, realmente. La oposición simplemente logró frenar un poco el avance de la revolución para quedar igual que antes.¿Y qué perdieron? Perdieron algunas banderas de las muy pocas que disponían.Que el árbitro no es confiable, que el presidente Chávez no reconocería sutriunfo, que los chavistas son violentos. Y ahora, además, se han declaradofervientes defensores de la constitución Bolivariana, lo cual es más bien untriunfo para nosotros.

What did the opposition win? Not much really. The opposition simply achieved to slow down a little the revolution’s advance that continues as before.
And what did the opposition lose? They lost the few cards they had left - the claims that elections can’t be trusted, that President Chávez wouldn’t recognize the result, that Chavistas are violent. And, furthermore, they have now declared themselves fervent defenders of the Bolivarian Constitution, which is more a victory for us.

¿Qué perdimos los revolucionarios? Una herramienta para aligerar el avancede la revolución, que tal vez no fue bien sustentada o se propuso en elmomento equivocado.¿Y que ganamos? Aumento de nuestro prestigio internacional como puebloeminentemente democrático, con un gran líder demócrata, y la oportunidad de reflexionar, pulir y rectificar las estrategias antes de que sea demasiado tarde.

What did the revolutionaries lose? A tool to accelerate the advance of the revolution, that maybe wasn’t well explained or was proposed at the wrong moment.
And what did we gain? An increase in our international prestige as an eminently democratic people, with a great democratic leader, and the opportunity to reflect, improve and rectify our strategies before it becomes too late.

Lo que pasó fue lo mejor que pudo pasar. Ante un adversario como el queenfrentamos, de ninguna manera nos convenía ganar el referendo con un margenestrecho. Si no ganábamos con suficiente ventaja, era mejor perder.
El rápido reconocimiento del triunfo del adversario, sin ninguna mezquindad,fue asumido por todo nuestro movimiento de manera disciplinada y le ahorróal país no se sabe cuantos actos de violencia innecesarios.

What happened was the best thing that could have happened. Considering the adversary that we faced, it wouldn’t have suited us to win the referendum with a small margin. If we were not going to win with a sufficient margin, it was better to lose.
The rapid recognition of our adversary’s victory, without any scheming, was taken by our entire movement in a disciplined manner and saved the country from who knows how much unnecessary violence.
Ramón Prada, Caracas

De las derrotas se aprende más que de las victorias.
El triunfo del No podría ser considerado un triunfo del miedo, de la manipulación, del terror, de la ignorancia y de la desinformación.
Ahora, debemos derribar el slogan fácil y debemos ir a la batalla ideológica profunda en el seno de nuestro pueblo.

One learns more from defeats than from victories.
The victory of the No could be considered a triumph of fear, of manipulation, terror, ignorance and disinformation.
Now, we should do away with easy slogans and (instead) take the ideological battle to the heart of the people.
Oscar Figuera, Partido Comunista de Venezuela (PCV), Caracas

La oposición todavía no tiene ninguna dirección, coherencia o respeto como una fuerza política.
Los derechistas deben toma la presidencia algún día, asegurar que la organisación revolucionaria - en los barrios, en los lugares de trabajo - permanezca fuerte e independiente para proteger los logros que han hecho.
Los colombianos esperaron que Chávez, cuando el escuchó que el voto había sido perdido, declarara la ley martial, enviando tanques a las calles, y soldados a los estudios de televisión.
Para mirar este man hablando sin formalidades, sin notas, y con humor y gracia, diciéndole a la oposición que disfrutaran su tarde, y aún debatiendo el impacto de los resultados con la audencia, abierta y honestamente, dejando a los colombianos un poco desorientados.
Yo creo que esta derrota y la gracia con lo que los Chavistas han aceptado, realmente lo hará disminuir la guerra de propaganda contra la revolución.

The opposition still has no direction, coherence or respect as a poltical force.
Should the right retake the presidency someday, ensure that revolutionary organisation on the ground, in the barrios, in workplaces, remains strong and independent to protect the gains that have been made.
Colombians expected Chávez, on hearing that the vote was lost, to declare martial law, send tanks onto the streets and soldiers into the TV studios.
To see this guy talking without formalities, without notes, with humour and grace, telling the opposition to enjoy their evening, and even debating the impact of the result in interactions with the people in the audience, openly and honestly, left Colombians a little disorientated.
I think this defeat and the grace in which the Chávistas have taken it will actually go a long way towards undercutting the propaganda war against the revolution.
Rocío Jiménez, Bogotá, Colombia

Nosotros no hemos podido lograr un proceso revolucionario desde abajo, con altos niveles de protagonismo popular, y la revolución Bolivariana esta todavía dirigida desde la cima.
Mucha gente que está con la revolución se abstuvo, esta vez, de votar porque ellos están siendo aumentados marginalmente por un proceso revolucionario y centralizado del estado. Ellos sienten que no es su revolución.
Es una revolución que está dándoles a ellos. Ellos no son los sujetos del proceso, pero son los meros objectos. Y esto es lo que causado el disenfranchisimiento y la alienación de tres millones de partidarios. Este es el camino errado que ha dirigido a la derrota.

We have been unable to achieve a revolutionary process from below, with high levels of popular protagonism, and the Bolivarian revolution is still essentially led from the top.
Lots of people that are with the revolution, refrained this time from voting because they are being increasingly marginalized by a centralized State revolutionary process. They feel it is not their revolution.
It is a revolution that being handed down to them. They are not the subjects of the process, but its mere objects. And this is what disenfranchised and alienated 3 million potential supporters. This is the wrong path that led us into defeat.
Teresa Arraíz, Ciudad Bolívar

¿Cómo puede la oposición moverse por encima de la mantra estúpida, monótona y superficial de ‘contra-dictador’? No pueden, porque no tienen nada de substancia para ofrecer.
La revolución ha ocupado, con su programa de inmensas y profundas reformas sociales, todo el espacio político posible.
Además, tan pronto como la opocisión intenta estar de acuerdo en un propuesta que no es propaganda cansada, ellos estallarán en una miríada de fragmentos.
Nada verdadamente estratégico y positivo sostiene juntos la mezcla frágil de los motivos contradictorios e insignificantes de la opocisión.

How can the opposition move beyond its stupid, monotonous and shallow ‘anti-dictator’ mantra? They can't, because they have nothing of substance beyond it to offer.
The revolution has occupied, with its vast and deep program of social reforms, all possible political space.
Besides, as soon as the opposition tries to agree on a proposal that is not just tired propaganda, they will explode into a myriad of fragments.
Nothing truly strategic and positive holds together the opposition's fragile concoction of contradictory and petty motives.
Augusto Piñango, Santa Rosalía, Portuguesa

No hemos perdido nada, en verdad perdimos sí una posibilidad, pero vamos a convencer a los compañeros, a los habitantes, a los que tienen dudas, a los que tienen temores… levanta la bandera del socialismo, estudiemos más, compactémonos mucho más, expliquemos más y sigamos ahora demostrando en los hechos en qué consiste, más allá de la teoría, la propuesta socialista.
We haven’t lost anything - just a possibility, but we are going to convince our compañeros, those who have doubts, those who have fears… raise the socialist standard, learn more, unite together, teach, and continue demonstrating through action - more than through theories - what socialism is.
President Hugo Chávez

Translations: paul.jisv

Por ahora, no pudimos

2007-12-03T12:02:00.000-05:00

Presidente Hugo Chávez Frías

I prefer it like this. I prefer that it ends like this.

Lo prefiero así. Yo prefiero que haya terminado así.

I am calm, as I hope all Venezuelans are at this moment. Let us all be proud with what we have done, and continue to respect each other.

Now, we must all recognize the decision, the very tiny margin. I say this to emphasis all those who voted Sí and to say to the leaders of the opposition - I sincerely hope you know how to deal with this success.

Estoy tranquilo, como espero que los venezolanos, a partir de este momento, también lo hagan. Estemos todos orgullosos con lo que hemos hecho, cada quien en su ámbito, con sus posiciones, respetando al otro.

Ahora, todos debemos reconocer que es una decisión ahí, muy chiquitica. Digo esto para recordar a quienes votaron por el Sí y a los dirigentes de oposición, mi sincera recomendación de que sepan administrar esa victoria.

I will sleep tranquilly. Those who are going to celebrate should know how to manage their victory. You gained it, but I wouldn’t have wanted such a pyrrhic victory… the vote totals are irreversible, and I recognize that. I congratulate my adversaries on this victory - it was a hard fight.
For now, we couldn’t… (but) the reform proposal is still alive, it hasn’t died.

Yo dormiré tranquilo. Los que vayan a celebrar que sepan administrar su victoria. Ustedes se la ganaron, pero yo esa victoria pírrica no la hubiera querido. Más bien prefiero que las cifras hayan llegado al nivel de irreversibilidad y sentarme delante de todos ustedes a reconocerlo. Felicito a mis adversarios por esa victoria; nosotros estamos hechos para una batalla larga.

Por ahora no pudimos… La propuesta de reforma está viva, no ha muerto.

I assume the responsibility for not achieving 50 per cent plus one for the proposal - but it nearly achieved it.
It has to be accepted: in Venezuela, despite all the scheming and lies, as President Castro described it a few days ago, a people under fire - under an intense artillery fire of lies and fears - still voted 49 per cent for the socialist project. Despite everything, this is a great political advance.

Yo asumo la responsabilidad de esta propuesta, que no logró el 50 por ciento más uno; pero casi lo logro. Hay que aceptarlo: venimos de una situación donde en Venezuela no había rumbo político, a pesar de todas las artimañas y mentiras que circularon, como el Presidente Castro lo describió hace unos días, un pueblo bajo fuego - fue sometido a un intenso fuego de artillería de mentiras y temores - sin embargo, que haya votado 49 por ciento por el proyecto socialista, a pesar de todo es un gran paso político.
We continue the battle to construct socialism, within the Constitution. In the proposal there are very audacious ideas, without precedents.

I will not erase a single comma of this proposal. The proposal continues…

Nosotros seguimos en la batalla por la construcción del socialismo, en el marco de la Constitución. En la propuesta hay ideas muy audaces, sin precedentes.

Ni una sola coma de esta propuesta, yo la retiro. La propuesta la continúo haciendo…

We lost 3 million votes - for what reasons? It is necessary to evaluate, although I am completely confident that the immense majority of those people continue with us, those who did not vote Sí. They abstained; had doubts, fears, no time - there was no chance to explain….

There are many political factors that we must take into account in this battle… we respected the rules of the game… (and) it is not the first time.

A nosotros nos faltaron 3 millones de votos de personas que no fueron a votar. ¿Por cuáles razones? Hay que evaluarlo, estoy completamente seguro que la inmensa mayoría de esas personas sigue con nosotros, que no votaron por el Sí.

Se abstuvieron: dudas, temores, faltó tiempo, capacidad para explicar….Hay bastantes elementos políticos que debemos tomar en cuenta en esta batalla… respetamos las reglas del juego… No es la primera vez.
The Chief of State invited the foreign journalists present to this concession, to observe how Venezuela continues speaking openly, with freedom of expression, criticism and demonstrations - as it has always done - and so to cause the accusations of a supposed dictatorship in Venezuela to crumble.

El Jefe de estado conminó a los periodistas extranjeros presentes en la alocución, a observar cómo en Venezuela se continuará hablando abiertamente, libertad de expresión, críticas y manifestaciones, como siempre ha sido, con lo que se desmoronan las acusaciones de una supuesta dictadura en Venezuela.
No more in Venezuela will there be elections as in the past… when the (workers’) Communist vote was torn between Acción Democrática and COPEI. This vote is a demonstration of the credibility and confidence that we have in our Constitution and in the institutions (misions and consejos comunales) that have been created as part of our Bolivarian democracy.

Ya nunca se verá en Venezuela lo que veíamos nosotros en las elecciones del pasado…cuando el Partido Comunista se lo repartían entre la Acción Democrática y el COPEI. Esta es una demostración de la credibilidad que debemos tener en nuestra Constitución y en las instituciones que ha creado, en nuestro sistema político de la democracia bolivariana.
I congratulate those who voted for the proposal and those who rejected it - to those who had doubts, this one (democracy) is the way… I hope they will now spurn, for ever, their nihilistic road to violence, destabilization and ignorance.

Venezuelan democracy is becoming mature and each process that we experience, each political moment, is allowing our country to continue advancing this new Bolivarian project that began in 1999.

Felicito a quienes votaron por la propuesta y quienes la rechazaron - a aquellos que tenían dudas, éste es el camino y ojalá se olviden, para siempre, de las trochas, los saltos al vacío, de los caminos de la violencia, de la desestabilización y el desconocimiento.

La democracia venezolano va madurando y cada proceso que vivimos, cada jornada política, va permitiendo que nuestro país continúe madurando, en este nuevo proyecto Bolivariano que comenzó en 1999.

To paraphrase the Liberator, Simón Bolivar, who, at the moment of presenting the text of Bolivia’s Constitution, said that if it was not accepted, he would bequeath it for the future, the reform proposal is entrusted to the immediate future.
(With this vote) our Bolivarian Constitution, so hard fought for, has finally been recognised by the opposition.
The opposition have to defend the Constitution… I hope (the opposition’s participation in the vote) hasn’t been a momentary political tactic. I want to have faith. We are going to construct the Venezuela that the Constitution reflects.

Parafrasear al Libertador Simón Bolívar, cuando en la oportunidad de entregar el texto de la Constitución de Bolivia, dicho que si no lo aceptaban lo legaría para el futuro, esta propuesta de Reforma la lega para un futuro inmediato.
Nuestra tan luchada constitución…que por cierto, uno de los grandes logros es que la oposición reconoció esta Constitución Bolivariana.Han salido a defenderla. Espero que no haya sido un recurso momentáneo y manejo electorero. Quiero creer en la buena fe. Vamos a construir la Venezuela que aquí esta reflejada.
3 de diciembre de 2007
Translation: paul.jisv

Arévalo, Árbenz, Álvaro

2007-11-05T08:15:00.000-05:00

Álvaro Colom, against expectations, has defeated rightist military candidate Otto Pérez to become Guatemala’s president. Colom took almost 1.5 million votes to Pérez’s 1.2 million, and promises to be the first progressive president in the Casa Presidencial palace since the United States forced Jacobo Árbenz to leave it in a 1954 coup.

Colom’s Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza coalition takes its inspiration from the 1944 October revolution that brought more than a century of authoritarian and dictatorial presidents to an end. Juan José Arévalo became the country’s first leftist president in March 1945 - he legalised unions and political parties, and drafted a democratic Constitution that the United States and its rightist client states in Central America considered a threat.

Arévalo’s philosophical socialismo espiritual concentrated on ‘liberating the imagination of the oppressed in Latin America’, and after Jacobo Árbenz became president in March 1951, he continued Arévalo’s emphasis on workers and the poorest despite the traditional elite’s resistance.

Árbenz attempted to take these policies further, but as he moved to end the patrician, racist hacendado traditions that peasant workers endured on foreign owned plantations, the US organised a far right military coup that forced the president into exile in México.

The Esperanza coalition claims Arévalo and Árbenz as its tradition, and president elect Colom considers Catholic liberation theology’s emphasis on the poor as an inspiration. He has promised to prioritise the indigenous that comprise 52 per cent of the country’s people, and to concentrate on combating the 58 per cent poverty rate.

The president elect is certain to encounter resistance. Although Esperanza has become the first legislative force in Congress, several rightist parties have more deputies in total, and although Colom defeated Pérez in 20 states in the presidential election’s second round, Pérez received his highest votes in the two states that cover the capital, La Ciudad de Guatemala.

Commenting on the Congressional elections and the presidential election’s first round, the newspaper El Periódico de Guatemala stated that, ‘the election has shown the conservative side of Guatemalan society… the parties on the right have dominated while the principal parties on the left have been almost eclipsed by decades of continuous governments of the right.’

Still, this election has created the hope that the patriarchal elite’s dominance is at last over, and has raised the expectation that the exclusion, racism, inequity and poverty that workers and the poorest endure, could start to come to an end.

Cristina Presidenta

2007-10-31T00:00:00.000-05:00

Cristina Fernández was elected as Argentina’s president on 28 October, standing as the Alianza Frente para la Victoria candidate - a leftist faction in the Justicialista Peronist party. Cristina won 8.204.600 votes or 45 per cent, to defeat Confederación candidate Elisa Carrió who took 4.2 million votes, and Roberto Lavagna on 3 million.

Cristina’s FPV also increased its representation in the 257 member Congress to more than 150 deputies, while the centrist Confederación took less than 30, independents have 25, and the rightist parties lost more than 30 deputies to leave them on 52. A similar picture in the Argentine Senate: Cristina has more than 40 senators in this 72 member legislature, against 5 in Confederación and 9 independents. The right lost 5 senators to leave them with just 14.

Cristina’s support was strongest amongst workers and the poorest in Argentina - she received the votes of just 25 per cent of Argentineans in the highest stratas, but 54 per cent of workers’ votes, reflecting Justicialista Peronista’s success in prioritising the other Argentina.

Argentina has emerged from a nightmare since discredited president Carlos Menem unleashed American inspired laissez faire business policies and dollarization on the country in the Nineties. The resulting corruption, inequity and attacks on workers and unions culminated in the worst poverty and unemployment rates Argentineans had ever experienced.

Rightist president Fernando de la Rúa, elected after Menem’s attempt at reelection was ruled unconstitutional, did nothing to alleviate this miseria. Workers then took to the streets in December 2001 in the cacerolazo riots and demonstrations in which banks and foreign corporations were attacked, and Coca Cola billboards burnt to represent Argentineans’ opposition to the elite’s reliance on the failed imported US policies.

Massive demonstrations in Buenos Aires on 20 December forced De La Rúa to leave the Casa Rosada presidential palace in a helicopter, and his replacement, Senate president Ramón Puerta, lasted barely two days before he too had to resign.

President Alfredo Rodríguez Saá, appointed by an elite that consistently failed to comprehend Argentineans’ desperation, lasted from 23 December to 31 December, resigning to be replaced by Eduardo Camaño, who stood down after two days, on 2 January 2002. Argentina’s politicians, refusing to call elections, then privately agreed to appoint Senator Eduardo Duhalde to be president.

Duhalde managed to hold out until elections were finally called in 2003, but Argentineans continued to endure severe poverty and inequality throughout 2002 - thousands were made homeless and had to resort to el rebusque - searching for whatever they could get on the streets.

Argentineans refused to accept the misery inflicted on them by the elite - thousands organised in the Movimientos de Trabajadores Desocupados and as piqueteros, or strikers, and many workplaces and factories were occupied and run by the workers themselves as Argentina moved to the left for the first time since Juan Perón first became president in 1946.

Néstor Kirchner, the leftist Justicialista Peronist candidate in the 2003 elections, was appointed president despite losing the first presidential election round to Menem, the elite’s unbelievable choice to run as the rightist candidate. Although Menem had taken almost 4.8 million votes to Kirchner’s 4.3 million, he resigned as a candidate in an attempt to deligitimize Kirchner’s inevitable victory in the second round.

Kirchner’s policies emphasising workers and the poorest - poverty has been reduced from 57 to 23 per cent since 2003, and unemployment has fallen from 18 to 7.7 per cent - meant the Justicialista Peronist left, and its presidential candidate, Cristina Fernández, could eclipse the rightist parties in the 2007 elections.

Political instability - Argentina had 7 presidents in five years at the turn of the century - is now over, and Cristina, elected president with the largest vote, and by the biggest margin since Juan Perón’s third election in 1973 on his return from exile, has a chance to continue Argentina’s resistance to the right’s traditional dominance in Latin America.

Cartagena de Indias

2007-10-30T21:48:00.000-05:00

La catedral de Cartagena de Indias, Colombia

Juliana

2007-10-30T21:36:00.000-05:00

Cartagena de Indias

La Guajira

2007-10-30T09:05:00.000-05:00

Indígena wayuú en un piichi o ranchería

en la frontera desierta Colombiana Venezolana

Polo Democrático takes Bogotá

2007-10-29T20:56:00.000-05:00

Polo Democrático takes Bogotá in step towards the Presidential Palace

Despite far right President Álvaro Uribe’s attacks, Colombia’s left opposition Polo Democrático swept the elections for Bogotá’s Mayor - the second most important political position in the country.

The Polo candidate, Samuel Moreno, took 915,000 or 43.6% of the votes on a record turnout, while the president’s candidate, Enrique Peñalosa, could only manage 589,000 or 28.2%, despite support from the main Uribista parties, the supposedly opposition Liberals, and Colombia’s sole national daily newspaper, El Tiempo.

Continued Polo Democrático domination in the capital not only strengthens the left challenge in Colombia’s next presidential elections, but has also derailed the right’s intention to change the constitution to allow Uribe to run for a third term.

Had Peñalosa defeated the Polo, Uribe would have considered this an endorsement of his re-election. As it is, the president is now hoping for a ‘catastrophe’, as he himself put it, that will give him an excuse to remain in office after his second term ends in 2010.

‘These elections are a slap for all those who wanted impunity to continue in Colombia, for all those who wanted poverty and inequality to continue in Bogotá,’ said Ángela, a Polo activist celebrating Moreno’s victory in the Ciudad Bolívar barrio that rises on a steep mountain at the edge of the capital.

‘It has to be recognised that the President of the Republic contributed to this victory with his scheming,’ declared Carlos Gaviria Díaz, the Polo Democrático’s national leader, ‘The president led a campaign against us that was contrary to the Constitution - he lied and attacked the Polo but his attacks had the opposite effect. Take note, Mr President, there’s nothing that can be done to stop the left taking the Presidential Palace!’

Uribe had constantly interfered in the election, claiming that the Polo had bought votes and demanding that Colombians not vote for leftist candidates ‘associated with terrorists or communists’. Although this is illegal under Colombia’s Constitution, which prohibits public officials from intervening in election campaigns, as the president has appointed his far right supporters to the Prosecutor’s office and the Supreme Court, there is little chance he will be investigated.

Luis Lucho Garzón and Samuel Moreno after the elections

The rising left challenge to Colombia’s closed politics built on the Polo Democrático’s ability to organise in poor workers’ barrios and the achievements of Bogotá’s current mayor, Luis ‘Lucho’ Garzón, who first won the capital for the left in 2003. Garzón’s emphasis on the poor, workers and the displaced has reduced poverty from 38.9% to 23% in Bogotá, even while Colombia’s national poverty rate continues at almost 50 per cent.

Garzón’s ‘Bogotá sin hambre’ ‘Bogotá without hunger’ and ‘Bogotá sin indiferencia’ ‘Bogotá without indifference’ programs have helped to ensure that poor workers and the displaced have a chance to escape the desperate poverty that forces literally millions in Colombia to try to survive on less than 8,000 pesos, or 4 US dollars, a day.

These programs have established 281 community kitchens in the poorest barrios in the capital, and have built schools and colleges in the most marginalised zones, while subsidising medical care to prevent almost 2 million workers in Bogotá being excluded from health care by Colombia’s privatised hospitals.

As a result, the Polo Democrático increased its vote in the capital from 797,000 to 915,000, and became the largest single party on Bogotá’s asamblea, while defeating all the rightist parties in 17 of the city’s 20 zones to more than double its representation on the city’s local juntas. This success has positioned Garzón as the obvious choice to be the Polo’s candidate in the next presidential elections, although the party’s current national leader, Carlos Gaviria, has strong support amongst the activists.

Gaviria, a former Constitutional Court justice and Senator, was the Polo’s presidential candidate in the 2006 elections, when the left took more than 2.5 million votes and eclipsed the traditional Liberals to become Colombia’s second political force after the rightist Uribista coalition.

Gaviria is considered more radical than Garzón, and has the support of Colombia’s influential Communists, but workers organised in the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores union confederation lean towards former union president Garzón. Some Polo Congressional representatives also suggest that Garzón’s record in the capital makes him the best choice to overcome Colombians’ traditional cynicism and distrust and prove that it is possible to end poverty and inequity.

As the Polo Democrático has a strong democratic tradition - more than 500,000 activists voted in the internal elections to choose delegates to the party’s first Congress last year - the presidential candidate will be discussed in caucuses and chosen in primaries in 2009, or just before the actual presidential election the following year.

Whoever the candidate is, Colombia’s local elections have shown that the Polo still has work to do. Despite the left’s success in Bogotá, the picture is more complicated in other parts of Colombia. Although the Polo doubled its national vote to elect local representatives across the country, it had to support independent candidates in Medellín, Cali and Cartagena to ensure rightist parties and corrupt caudillos were defeated in the big cities.

The elections proved that the far right paramilitaries, clientilism and the caudillos still have a strong hold on Colombia’s politics, although the violence that saw 30 candidates assassinated had more to do with rightist factions settling scores amongst each other than an organised campaign against the left.

Some local caudillo bosses were defeated by independent candidates on the Caribbean coast, most notably in César state where Cristian Moreno won supported by the Polo Democrático. Moreno had stood down as a candidate in the 2003 elections after receiving death threats, but the Uribista candidate who then ‘won’ that election unopposed is now in jail for his ties to the paramilitaries.

However, other corrupt political bosses maintained their control through traditional patronage and bought votes. In Chocó on the Pacific coast, where the poverty rate is an incredible 80 per cent, a vote cost 100,000 pesos, or about 50 dollars, according to election observer Victor Raúl Mosquera. Some voters ‘received wood, zinc sheets or paint,’ he reported, ‘and all the parties except the Polo did this.’

Rightist paramilitary front parties and other parties in the president’s Uribista coalition continue to control several states, but even after the election results there were scores of instances of these parties’ supporters fighting each other, and even setting fire to candidates’ campaign buildings where it was perceived that one candidate had bought more votes than another.

This indiscipline has raised concerns amongst Colombia’s elite about the right’s ability to unite their disparate parties to challenge the Polo Democrático. Although the scattered rightist parties seem to have more support on paper if their votes and political positions are added together, Colombia’s tradition of personalist caudillos and proud, arrogant bosses might be too strong for the right to overcome in order to present a united candidate in the next presidential elections.

For this reason, there is much speculation in the rightist press to encourage Uribe to run for a third term. To do this, the Constitution would have to be changed again - it was already rewritten in 2005 to allow Uribe to run for reelection the first time - and although the Supreme Court has a rightist majority, the conservative Colombian elite are cautious about more changes to what they consider to be the country’s ‘institutional stability’. As such, a ‘second reelection’ may be a step too far for these traditionalists to make more changes to their Constitution, even for Uribe.

To counter this, one of the main Uribista parties intends to present to the right dominated Congress a proposal to put the Constitutional change to a referendum, calculating that a national vote, with limited turnout and opportunities for buying support and intimidating opposition, will allow them to circumvent the Supreme Court.

But some traditionalists are drawing unfavourable comparisons with Venezuelan President Chávez, and among others there is the concern that further revelations in the parapolítica scandal will at some point debilitate Uribe, contribute to the left’s advance, and culminate in a defeat for the right in the Congressional elections due to be held just 8 weeks before the next presidential elections.

Colombia’s business and financial elite, already nervous about losing the American free trade agreement, are concerned about the impression Uribe’s intemperance and arrogance is having in the US. Regardless of their political affinity with Uribe, their commercial interests come first, and comments in the financial press indicate this elite would prefer to support a fresh rightist candidate against the left in the next elections.

There is no guarantee that the right will agree on one, however. Uribistas are scattered amongst at least 6 political parties, with no particular reason for their separation other than the egos of the party leaders. None of these parties have clear, principled policies other than to support the president, and it is obvious that without this ‘Pole Star’ these parties would have nothing more than a support either based on personalist patronage or on votes that are bought, or gained through intimidation.

Without the president standing as a candidate, there are certain to be many opportunistic short term coalitions amongst the right, alliances based on personalities, and much disagreement and little coherence. In addition, none of these parties have the organisation and activists to sustain a committed and disciplined campaign or organised party for more than a short time.

In the recent local elections, it was common to see people paid by these parties to distribute leaflets and even attend meetings, while the Polo Democrático could count on a massive activists’ base - some 500,000 members - whose work on the campaign did not need to be paid for, but was instead voluntary, committed and engaged.

Tumultuous scenes and thousands of supporters greeted Polo candidates in the barrios, and some 25,000 attended the party’s closing rally in Bogotá, while the Uribista parties were reduced to paying people to give out leaflets at stoplights, and instead of taking to the streets or talking to Colombians, relied on press conferences and endorsements from columnists in newspapers and magazines that most people are too poor to even buy.

For this reason, bought votes became one of the main themes in the elections, and the successes the right had often came in states where politics continue to be controlled through a caudillo or political boss.

The polarisation in the elections between left and right has also disorientated Colombia’s historic traditional parties, continuing the crisis about their relevance that Uribe precipitated when, although a Liberal, he became president in 2002 as an independent supported by the Conservatives.

In these elections, the Conservatives, now tired of being coopted and marginalised by the far right, split from the Uribistas and ran a separate candidate in Bogotá, and have declared their intention to run their own candidate in the presidential elections, whether Uribe stands again or not.

The Liberals are split. The party that has given Colombia six of its last eight presidents lost half its representation throughout the country in the elections, and didn’t even stand a candidate in the capital, Bogotá, where their official position was to support the Uribistas, even though most party members actively campaigned for the Polo Democrático.

‘These elections dramatically demonstrated the terminal crisis of the traditional two party system that for a century and a half has dominated our politics,’ wrote Álvaro Vásquez in the Partido Comunista Colombiano newspaper, Voz. ‘In Bogotá, the Conservative candidate couldn’t even achieve one per cent of the vote, and the Liberals supported the Uribista, Peñalosa, showing that these old parties no longer have a place in Colombia.’

The Liberal’s opportunism and schizophrenia, (a celebrated victory was a Liberal win over a notorious caudillo boss in Atlantico state on the Caribbean coast, while in states where the resurgent paramilitaries dominate, the caudillo bosses often are the Liberals), suggest the party, desperate to regain power after three successive presidential election defeats, is likely to support whoever it perceives as having the strongest chance to take the presidency next time, whether the Polo or the right.

The Liberals could still be important in this respect, because although the Polo’s strength as a united, coherent and independent party is feared - even the rightist press were impressed how the Polo took Bogotá with almost a million votes without making alliances, while Peñalosa lost despite the support of the two strongest Uribista parties and the Liberals - in much of Colombia it may prove difficult to break the traditional caudillo bosses hold over some states in the time before the next elections.

This has led some in the Polo to suggest that an alliance with the more progressive and principled Liberal activists in these states might be necessary, and cite the fact that there is still a residue of traditional support, especially from workers, for the Liberals - Colombia’s most progressive president, Alfonso López Pumarejo, who governed in the Thirties and Forties and is often compared to US President Franklin Roosevelt, and also Colombia’s most radical leftist, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, who had to be assassinated in 1948 to stop him becoming president and taking Colombia to the left for the first time, were in the Liberal Party and are still remembered and celebrated.

Across Colombia, the Liberals still took more votes than the Polo in these elections, (although in the 2006 presidential elections the Polo had eclipsed the Liberals), demonstrating that the traditional party still has an organisation in states where the Polo has little presence, further encouraging some on the left to believe an alliance is necessary.

Others in the Polo believe its strength is precisely in the fact that the left is not associated with the traditional clientilist patronage that the Liberals still represent. Although the only alliance with another party in these elections was with the Liberals in Santander state, where the Polo supported perennial presidential candidate and proven Uribe critic, Horacio Serpa, to victory over a rightist paramilitary front party candidate, some Polo members question why the Liberals should receive any support at all, especially when their leaders campaigned against the Polo in Bogotá.

Instead, cited as an inspiration is President Chávez’s success in Venezuela, where he has mobilised unorganised workers and the poor in the barrios who had never voted or even supported a political party before, instead of trying to win over those who are already involved in politics.

In Colombia this constituency is huge - more than 50 per cent never vote in elections, millions are displaced and most workers are unorganised. Instead of attempting to win over those supporting the traditional parties or caudillo bosses, the Polo should organise in the barrios and among these workers, and organise vote registration campaigns to involve the displaced and the poorest.

That the left has already had some success pursuing this strategy was evidenced by opinion polls that disastrously underestimated the Polo’s support, due to the indifference the press had in the poor or the desterrados displaced in the barrios where Polo activists had been campaigning and organising. Right to the end of the election campaign in Bogotá, some polls undercut the Polo’s vote by more than ten points, underestimating the party’s actual vote by about 250,000.

The elections have given further indications that Colombians are perhaps not as conservative as thought. Chávista revolutionary parties, such as the Corriente Bolivariana and Movimiento Bolivariano de Colombia, took almost 12,000 votes in 6 states - enough, according to political analysts, to elect a Chávista representative to Congress should that figure be repeated in the congressional elections.

The Partido Comunista Colombiano, standing candidates as part of the Polo Democrático, won more than 20 positions throughout the country, including local mayors, state asamblea representatives and consejo positions on Bogotá’s asamblea. The Polo has even organised chapters among Colombian immigrants in the United States, Spain and Venezuela, registering migrant workers to vote and making sure the Polo’s message is brought back into these workers’ home communities.

The Polo has proved that Colombians have a strong identification with the party - in the elections, its supporters didn’t spilt their vote, voting the party list all down the ballot, and even the elite press constantly counter poses the left coalition’s organisation to the Uribista coalition’s ‘indiscipline.’

Columnists and political commentators take it as obvious that in the next elections it will be the Polo’s presidential candidate that the right will have to beat, and although there is much work still to be done, the Polo’s continuing election successes, and its ability to organise the other Colombia - the poor, workers and the displaced - show that Colombia has a strong chance to leave its isolation and soon join the rest of Latin America on the left.

______________________________

Sources

¿Quién ganó en las elecciones colombianas? Simone Bruno, Telesur report, Caracas, 5 de noviembre de 2007
Comienza división liberal por alianzas para el 2010, report in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 31 de octubre de 2007
El Polo es una realidad nacional, editorial in Voz, Bogotá, 31 de octubre de 2007
¿Seguirá el Polo? article in Semana, Bogotá, 6 de agosto de 2007
Por Bogotá, vamos a ganar, Bogotá Positiva election campaign paper, Bogotá, octubre de 2007
El Polo obtuvo la mayor votación en 18 de las 20 JAL, report in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 30 de octubre de 2007
Peñalosa en su laberinto, article in Cambio, Bogotá, septiembre de 2007
El colapso, article in Semana, Bogotá, 29 de octubre de 2007
Una docena de tejas por su voto, Constanza Vieira, IPS, Montevideo, 27 de octubre de 2007
Polo repite en Bogotá, headline report in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 29 de octubre de 2007
Germán Vargas Lleras interview in El Espectador, Bogotá, 4 de noviembre de 2007
Una campaña bajo la guerra sucia, Álvaro Angarita, Voz, Bogotá, 31 de octubre de 2007
Maya pide investigar a Uribe; gobierno dice que no ha participado en política, report in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 31 de octubre de 2007
Se descarriló el tren sucio contra el Polo, Daniel Samper Pizano, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 31 de octubre de 2007
César Gaviria interview in Semana, Bogotá, 5 de noviembre de 2007
Uribe perdió en Bogotá, María Jimena Duzán, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 29 de octubre de 2007
Unos resultados aleccionadores, Rafael Cuello, Polo Democrático internet site, Colombia, 7 de noviembre de 2007

Hacía la Presidencia de la República!

2007-10-29T08:02:00.000-05:00

These elections are a slap for all those who wanted impunity to continue in Colombia, for all those who wanted poverty and inequality to continue, for all those who continue threatening us with the shadow of death.

Estas elecciones son una bofetada para todos aquellos que quieren que la impunidad se mantenga en Colombia, para todos aquellos que quieren que sigamos en la pobreza y desigualidad, para todos aquellos que continuen siendo manejados por la sombra de la muerte.
Ángela, Ciudad Bolívar, Bogotá

A victory so sweeping, that without doubt is the first down payment for the presidential elections… organise the masses to give the coup de grâce with Lucho Garzón’s presidency!

Un triunfo tan arrollador, que sin duda es la cuota inicial para las presidenciales… ¡de sembrar las bases para dar el golpe final con la presidencia de Lucho Garzón!

Eder Gutierrez, Barrio La Candelaría, Bogotá

We will continue like this, now for the presidency, and I don’t care if Lucho Garzón or Carlos Gaviria is the candidate - the aim is to take the presidential palace.

Continuemos así, ahora por la presidencia, no interesa que sea Lucho Garzón o Carlos Gaviria, la idea es llegar al palacio presidencial.
Álvaro Cañon, Bogotá

It was hard fought, heartbreaking… we feel that they attacked each of us personally when they lied and slandered the Polo, but we won!

Fue luchada, dolorosa, desgarradora, sentimos que nos atacaban a nosotros mismo cuando se calumniaba e injuriaba al Polo Democrático, pero ¡ganamos!

César Patiño, Barrio San Victorino, Bogotá

These elections dramatically demonstrate the terminal crisis of the traditional two party system that for a century and a half has dominated our politics. In Bogotá, the Conservative candidate couldn’t even achieve one per cent of the vote, and the Liberals supported the Uribista, Peñalosa.
This shows that the old traditional parties don’t have a place in Colombia and the experience has given a hard knock to the prophecies of the analysts in the press, who continued predicting disaster for the Polo.

Estas elecciones muestran dramáticamente la crisis terminal del bipartidismo tradicional, el cual durante siglo y medio copó el escenario de nuestra política. En Bogotá, el candidato conservador no llega al uno por ciento de voto, y los liberals apoyan a los uribista Peñalosa.
Esto demuestra que las viejas formaciones tradicionales no tienen espacio en la vida colombiana y la experiencia ha dado un duro golpe a las profecías de los analistas de la prensa, que se mantienen previendo la dispersión y el desastre del Polo.
Álvaro Vásquez, Partido Comunista Colombiano, Bogotá

A victory of serenity over arrogance and a president that dismissed all logical principle in reason and politics.

Una triunfado de la serenidad sobre la soberbia y un presidente que descoce todo principio lógico en la razón y la política.
José Hernández, Cartagena

This is the continuation of the democratic path that Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador have taken… the country is polarized between the Uribistas and the real opposition that is the Polo… this means that we have to begin bringing the factions in the party together in order to arrive at the presidency.

Es el de continuar el camino democrático de Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador… Se polariza el país entre los uribistas y la oposición real que somos el Polo… esto significa que tenemos que iniciar la consolidación del partido a través de sus tendencias para llegar al gobierno.
Gilberto Ospina, Medellín

Polo election convention, Bogotá, October 2007

With our votes the people of Bogotá defeated the dirty scheming of the president… soon, the presidency will be ours!

Los bogotanos con nuestros votos derrotamos la suciedad y mezquindad del presidente… de pronto, ¡la presidencia es nuestra!
Nelsi Pérez, Bogotá

It has to be recognised that the President of the Republic contributed to this victory with his scheming and his mistakes. The president led a campaign against the Polo Democrático that was not only contrary to the Constitution, but against all norms and decency.
They created a war of improprieties, of lies, of attacks against the Polo in an attempt to deny us victory, but it wasn’t possible.
He wanted to bring his prestige to this campaign, but it had the opposite effect. In this moment the Polo Democrático has obtained a sweeping victory and the President of the Republic has been comprehensively defeated. Take note, Mr President, there’s nothing that can be done to stop the forces of the Polo.
The Polo is confirmed today as an unstoppable force for the presidency in 2010.

Hay que reconocer que el Presidente de la República contribuyó a este triunfo con sus mezquindades y sus torpezas. El señor presidente fue a encabezar una campaña contra el Polo Democrático, no solo por fuera de la Constitución, sino por fuera de las normas y la decencia.
Que fueran a emprender una guerra de improperios, de calumnies, de injuries contra el Polo, para ver si no arrebataba la victoria, pero no le fue posible.
Él quiso vincular su fuerte a esta campaña y le salió al revés su propósito. En este momento el Polo Democrático ha obtenido una victoria arrolladora y el Presidente de la República ha sido tremendamente derrotado. Que tome nota el señor presidente, que ningún escenario es suficiente ya para albergar las fuerzas del Polo.
Que sepa que el Polo se ha afirmado hoy en el país como una fuerza incontenible, y que en el 2010 la presidencia va a ser del Polo.
Carlos Gaviria Díaz, Presidente del Polo Democrático

The results of the election campaign show that many Colombian citizens resist continuing to accept the right, and that we consider it necessary to increase the resistance.

Los resultados de la campaña electoral es el reflejo de que muchos ciudadanos de Colombia nos resistimos a seguir aceptando al derecho y consideramos necesario incrementar la resistencía.
Mario Velásquez Caicedo, Macao

A strong opposition and being an observer on consejos and asambleas is an important front in the struggle, but I think the Polo should look outside Bogotá because a real alternative to take the presidency will come from working from now all across Colombia.

Una oposición firme y una veeduría de los consejos y asambleas es un frente de lucha importante, pero pienso que el Polo debe mirar más al fuera de Bogotá porque una alternativa de poder real para la presidencia pasa por el trabajo que desde ahora se haga al fuera la capital en todo Colombia.
Dámaso Alegría, Quibdó, Chocó

We are ready for whatever will be necessary, starting now for the elections for President of the Republic. For a Bolivarian revolution in Colombia!

Estamos listos para lo que sea necesario y puesta desde ya en las elecciones a la Presidencia de la República. ¡Por una revolución Bolivariano en Colombia!
Ati Montañez, Pereira

We are a party that is different, and we can’t allow ourselves to fall into the clientilist and corrupt practices of the other parties, and like them sell out our principles for favours.

Nosotros somos un partido diferente y no podemos caer en las prácticas polítiqueras, clientelistas y corruptos de los demás, así como tampoco vender nuestro ideario a cambios de prebendas.
Moisés Quintero, Barrio San Cristóbal Sur, Bogotá

The Polo should consolidate unity from below, and unite the strategy of electoral participation with mobilising and organising the people.

El Polo se propone la consolidación de la unidad desde abajo y conjugar la participación electoral con el esfuerzo por la movilización y organización más cumplia del pueblo.
Quena Ribadeneira, Communist/Polo delegate elected in Barrio Teusaquillo, Bogotá

The elections show that the Polo Democrático is a national reality… but that parapolítica is a national reality too. As an international observer commented: if they pursued this dirty war to derail the election in Bogotá, what wouldn’t they do - kidnapping, disappearances or assassinations - to stop the victory of the left in a presidential campaign…
The traditional two party system is mortally wounded, although it still staggers on, but the Polo Democrático has a future ahead of it. The most important thing now is to act without sectarianism and without ambiguity.

Las elecciones demostraron que el Polo Democrático es una realidad nacional… pero también la parapolítica es una realidad nacional. Como dijo un veedor internacional: si adelantaron esta guerra sucia para impedir la elección en Bogotá, qué no pueden hacer - secuestrar, desaparecer o asesinar - para impedir la victoria de la izquierda en una campaña presidencial…
El tradicionalismo bipartidista está herido de muerte, aunque todavía patalea, pero el Polo Democrático tiene un porvenir por delante. Ahora, la clave está en que actúe sin sectarismo y sin ambigüedad.
Voz editorial

To all those who wanted to stigmatize the Polo Democrático - the people of Bogotá know how to think and understand. And vote with independence. This is the lesson for the president.

A todas los que quisieron estigmatizar el Polo Democrático - los bogotanos saben pensar y entender. Y votan con independencia. Esa es la lección para el presidente.
Joselín Bolaños, Bogotá

The crushing triumph of Moreno in Bogotá, as well as the consolidation of the Polo Democrático as the first political force in the capital, shows that Bogotanos don’t appreciate the president interfering in elections and telling them who to vote for. His intervention produced the opposite effect to what he intended - in the end, he lost Peñalosa votes.
Just to point out, if its not already crystal clear, that neither the editorials in El Tiempo, nor countless political columnists, convinced the voters. If they had, Peñalosa would have won by a large margin. A slap in the face to the columnists and a warning to the media who ganged up to defeat the Polo… The voters are not idiots and they know when someone tries to manipulate them.

El aplastante triunfo de Moreno en Bogotá, además de consolidar al Polo Democrático como primera fuerza política en la capital, demuestra que a los bogotanos no nos gusta que el presidente se nos meta al rancho y nos diga por quién debemos votar. Su intervención resultó produciendo el efecto contrario - al final, quitándole votos a Peñalosa.
Quedó probado, por sí ya no estaba claro, que ni los editorials de El Tiempo ni los votos cantados de los columnistas tienen incidencia en los votantes. Si contaran, Peñalosa habría ganado y por amplio margen. Un golpe al ego de los columnistas, y una voz de alarma para los medios, que en gavilla trataron de socavar al Polo… los electors no son bobos y saben cuándo se los manipula.

María Jimena Duzán in El Tiempo, Bogotá

Translations: paul.jisv

Bogotá de La Candelaría

2007-10-01T08:31:00.000-05:00

Bogotá de La Candelaría

Barrio Las Nieves, Bogotá

2007-09-30T21:59:00.000-05:00

Bogotá downtown

Polo Democrático's challenge to Colombia

2007-09-30T21:58:00.000-05:00

Luis ‘Lucho’ Garzón, probable Polo Democrático candidate
in Colombia’s next presidential elections

The Polo is the only option that Colombia has to leave the nightmare… our alternative to the old traditional bosses will end this long night, and the Uribista’s attempts to force us against the wall and deligitimize us will not bear fruit.
Rodrigo Córdoba, Polo Democrático activist, Bogotá

There is no doubt that the leftist Polo Democrático coalition has become a decisive movement in Colombia’s politics. Political commentators and newspaper editorials have devoted much space to this rising challenge to Colombia’s closed, elitist politics, the first organised democratic and leftist opposition since the Unión Patriótica had its activists and candidates massacred by paramilitaries in the late Eighties.

Literacy is not total in Colombia, and even the government concedes that almost 50 per cent of all its citizens live in poverty, struggling to survive on less than 4 US dollars a day. Newspapers that cost a dollar, or political magazines that cost almost five dollars are clearly not a priority for most Colombians, and so the debate in the press over the Polo Democrático is more a discussion amongst the elite about how to deal with this threat to their privileges.

Far right Colombian President Álvaro Uribe has set the tone, intemperately calling the opposition ‘disguised communists’, while Uribista politicians resort to the standard McCarthyite tactic of our times - ‘you are either with the President or with the terrorists’ - and demand the Polo expel all activists and candidates who suggest that Colombia’s war might be connected to the country’s inequality, inequity and poverty.

Although rightist politicians attempt to either dismiss the Polo as ‘communists’, or continue to have faith that a conservative Colombia will be sceptical towards a leftist party, more intelligent observers amongst the elite have realised that the left has a real chance to win the next presidential elections.

At a recent ‘closed seminar’, political strategists, advisors and newspaper editors concluded that the Polo Democrático appeared to be the strongest and most coherent political force, and could in all probability force the 2010 elections into a second round. This prospect concerned those present, who believed the right were not as united or as organised, and who were still uncertain about the possibility that Uribe could change Colombia’s Constitution again to allow a third presidential term.

Armando Montenegro, the reporter who revealed the seminar’s discussions, wrote that the political strategists advised the right to organise a ‘scare the rich’ campaign, in order to create a fear amongst the elite that could force the Supreme Court to allow Uribe to run again.

At the same time, editorialists and political columnists have voiced despair that the traditional parties are no longer considered a credible option in Colombia’s political scene. In part, this is due to Uribe’s own political opportunism - originally a Liberal, he stood as an independent supported by the Conservatives, and has, as an unintended consequence, decimated traditional politics.

The right are now scattered, dispersed amongst personalist, caudillo parties that have no clear principles but instead dispense favours and patronage to obtain votes. Almost 50 Senators and Congress representatives in these parties are either in jail or under investigation for their ties to the far right paramilitaries.

That the Liberals have lost respect and are considered irrelevant, has been demonstrated by ex President and current party boss César Gaviria, who said that the party could not oppose the government’s policies because it might ‘lose points’, while the old Conservatives are struggling to recover their independence after being co-opted and marginalised by the far right Uribe.

This has led some commentators to believe it is inevitable that the left will win the next presidential elections, and as a result, their columns and opinion articles have sought to influence the Polo Democrático’s politics, attempting to favour perceived ‘moderates’ over more leftist or even Chavista leaders in the party.

Semana, Colombia’s most prestigious political magazine, and the rightist newspaper El Tiempo, have made the greatest efforts to intervene in the Polo’s political debates, printing speculative articles suggesting that prominent leftist leaders are considering resignation, or patronising editorials that advise the party to be ‘responsible’.

‘The elite demands a decaffeinated opposition party,’ comments Polo activist Carlos Castillo, ‘one that is extremely similar to the right.’ A party in the right’s image seems to be all that the Polo Democrático’s critics understand. Accustomed to the patronage practised by the old traditional parties and the new, Uribista caudillo parties, some columnists interpret the Polo’s advance in terms familiar to them.

‘A clientilist threat,’ writes Alejandro Gaviria in El Espectador, claiming that the left’s emphasis on ending poverty, ‘is old politics, handing out favours to gain votes,’ while El Tiempo believes that the party’s open, combative and democratic debates on policies - unheard of in Colombia’s traditional politics where policies are quietly agreed upon in elite clubs - demonstrates ‘immaturity and irresponsibility.’

‘The proof that the Polo is a new and honourable movement is that it doesn’t have tired old politicians,’ points out Colombian poet and writer William Ospina, rebutting the media’s attacks, ‘Colombia needs a true democracy, and the Polo lacks the malice and shrewdness that characterize the old parties and politicians, and with ease it has provoked some in the elite and confused others.’

The Polo Democrático has not just ‘provoked and confused’ the elite through its emphasis on workers, the poor and the displaced. Contrary to the localised caudillo party bosses, the Polo is a national party that organises all over Colombia - in barrios that no traditional politician visits, and amongst workers whose unions offer it their unequivocal support.

The fact that several different leftist political parties overcame their historical sectarianism to unite in the Polo Democrático, including the influential Partido Comunista Colombiano, has raised more McCarthyite fears in the press. ‘Communists in the Polo raises suspicions,’ states Semana, ‘and the question that has to be asked is whether the party can avoid their influence increasing, which it must do if the Polo wants to maintain the moral authority to criticise paramilitaries in politics.’

This astonishing attempt to equate communist participation in a democratic leftist opposition party, with far right terrorist paramilitaries that have killed Colombians - including communists and leftist political activists - in their thousands, has rightly been greeted with complete contempt.

‘This tactic, ever more frequently used by the press and the Presidential Palace, intends to polarize Colombia,’ retorts Felipe Zuleta in El Espectador, ‘To dirty the name of the left is far easier than attempting to show the president is not connected to narco bosses or paramilitaries disguised as politicians.’

‘The régime sees the Polo as an enemy to contain and has unleashed the narco paramilitary dogs,’ adds Jaime Caicedo, a communist activist in the Polo, ‘each day, the president and his ministers make up all kinds of lies to discredit it as they try to make us adopt a conciliatory attitude acceptable to the régime… the blackmail consists in saying: be a tame opposition or your destiny will be that of the Unión Patriótica, while others demand the Polo becomes a moderate party, and the press gives lessons in how to be ‘sensible’.

Carlos Gaviria Díaz, presidential candidate in the 2006 elections
and current Polo Democrático president

The latest attempts to ‘moderate’ the Polo Democrático have reflected the old opportunistic tradition in Colombia’s politics that permits individual politicians to change parties as it suits them. ‘To be more attractive to Colombian voters,’ Semana condescendingly advises, ‘independent politicians’, ‘respected Liberals’ and even ‘dissident Uribistas’ should not just be potential Polo members, but become Polo leaders.

Completely failing to understand that the Polo is a democratic party with its own elections, primaries and activists - more than 500,000 party members voted for delegates to the first Polo Congress in 2006 that then elected the party’s leadership - Semana’s spectacular ignorance reveals just how used the elite are to assuming that everyone is as opportunist as them.

Arrogantly taking for granted that individuals without principles, convictions or even affinity with the Polo’s aims, could usurp its democratic processes and simply assume or be handed a leadership position, indicates the contempt Colombia’s rulers have for those ordinary citizens who are now organising and participating in politics on their own terms.

Polo Democrático President, Carlos Gaviria Díaz, spelt out the irreconcilable difference between the left and Colombia’s elite: ‘I think that in Colombia there are two proposals: one of the right, that supports, strengthens and consolidates the current inequity, and another of the left, where we want to change this state of affairs.’

Criticising the attempts to pressure the party to move to the right, he reiterated: ‘Our party is a leftist party. Many people ask why we don’t call it a ‘centre left’ party and I tell them; because I don’t know what the centre is… in a polarized Colombia, the centre shamelessly flirts with the right.’

‘I want the term ‘leftist’ to be used without fear in Colombia, without demonizing this position,’ Gaviria continued, ‘I don’t speak of an armed left, but a democratic left, where we propose to make substantial changes and reforms in Colombian society through electoral politics.’

It is this determination that has caused such fear amongst Colombia’s more far sighted political strategists and commentators, and has them attempting to curtail the party’s independence, radicalism and the challenge it represents to the elite - but it is almost certainly too late.

‘The Polo has become the sole democratic opposition in Colombia in the eyes of the people,’ as Jaime Caicedo says, and the poet William Ospina agrees, emphasising that the Polo must ‘maintain its presence, its vigorous and pluralist character… it must not get worn down in opposition, but must usurp the traditional clientilism, scepticism and violence of this country and continue advancing policies of change to offer an alternative.’

Bogotá, 30 de septiembre de 2007

________________________________

Sources

¡No a otra reelección! ¡Sí a la competencia! Carlos Caballero Argáez, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 1 de septiembre de 2007
En defensa de la unidad, Jaime Caicedo, Voz, Bogotá, 18 de septiembre de 2007
Carlos Gaviria Díaz interview in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 23 de septiembre de 2007
Un fantasma recorre el Polo, article in Semana, Bogotá, 3 de septiembre de 2007
¿Todas las formas de lucha? Hugo García Segura, El Espectador, Bogotá, 2 de septiembre de 2007
2010, Armando Montenegro, El Espectador, Bogotá, 26 de agosto de 2007
Polo Democrático: unido, Patricia Lara Salive, ¿Qué Qué? Bogotá, 20 de septiembre de 2007
La amenaza clientelista, Alejandro Gaviria, El Espectador, Bogotá, 23 de septiembre de 2007
¡Vaya paradoja! Carlos A Lozano, editorial in Voz, Bogotá, septiembre de 2007
Un partido descremado, Carlos Castillo Cardona, El Tiempo, 19 de septiembre de 2007
Declaración del comité ejecutivo nacional del Polo Democrático, statement on Polo Democrático internet site, Colombia, 19 de septiembre de 2007
Nuestros gobernantes, Felipe Zuleta, El Espectador, Bogotá, 2 de septiembre de 2007
El fortalecimiento del Polo es nuestra tarea fundamental, Partido Comunista Colombiano statement in Voz, Bogotá, 17 de septiembre de 2007
Aprender de la democracía, William Ospina, Cromos, Bogotá, 22 de septiembre de 2007
Polos opuestos, editorial in El Espectador, Bogotá, 16 de septiembre de 2007
¿Hacía una nueva izquierda? article in Semana, Bogotá, 17 de septiembre de 2007
Fuerte división en el Polo Democrático por posición frente a las Farc, article in El Tiempo, 11 de septiembre de 2007
La razones de la unidad del Polo, Senador Jorge Robledo, Polo Democrático internet site, Colombia, 24 de septiembre de 2007

Ni un paso atrás!

2007-09-30T21:56:00.000-05:00

Colombia’s opposition activists debate the Polo Democrático

The Polo is the only option that Colombia has to leave the nightmare. Our alternative to the old traditional bosses will end this long night.
The Uribista’s attempts to force us against the wall and deligitimize us will not bear fruit.

El Polo es la única opción que tiene Colombia para salir la pesadilla. Nuestro alternativo a los viejos - los gamonales tradicionales - acabaré esta noche larga.
Los intentos de los Uribistas para colocarnos contra la pared y desligitmarnos no tendrá los frutos.
Rodrigo Córdoba, Bogotá

The Polo should be an example of modernity and inclusion, learning the democracy that the traditional parties have never learnt. The Polo has the organisation, identity, a common purpose and the unity that it has to have to be strong enough to confront forces, like the president and the press, that constantly fight against us.

El polo debe dar ejemplo de modernidad e inclusion, ensenar la democracia que los partidos tradicionales nunca hicieron. El Polo tiene la organización, identidad, proposito comun y la unidad hay lo que tener como acumular fuerzas para enfrentar fuerzas, como el presidente y la prensa, que cada vez se fortalecen mas contra nosotros.
Ángela Salcedo Martínez, union worker in the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Colombia, Cartagena

It is clear that the Polo is an option for those on the Pacific coast and the indigenous who have been forgotten by the traditional parties that have ignored Colombia’s diversity.
I am sure that the politicians are discovering, almost for the first time, a Colombia that they didn’t know. A Colombia made invisible, silenced and excluded.

Es claro que el Polo es una opción para los pueblos en la costa Pacífica y para los indígenas, los sectores olvidados por los partidos tradicionalistas, pues han ignorado la diversidad de Colombia.
Estoy seguro de que los políticos se están encontrando, casi por primera vez, una Colombia que no se conocían. Una Colombia invisibilizada, acallada y excluida.

Esperanza Peña, Guapí

To be leftist, or better, to be democratic, is to be a critic; in the Polo there shouldn’t be sermons, or holy trinities of infallible leaders, nor caudillo bosses.

Ser de izquierda, o mejor, ser democrático, es ser crítico; en el Polo no debe haber pontífices, ni santísimas trinidades de señores infalibles, ni gamonales dueños.
Juan Carlos Beto, Polo activist in Barrio Jerusalén, Ciudad Bolívar, Bogotá

There is nothing more indignant than to see the Devil getting what he wants. In Colombia it is normal to see elite politicians with no respect criticising the opposition.
The worst is that these politicians do it with a double morality… this is clear - that the politicians involved in paramiltarism have no right to criticise us.
Our Polo congress representatives are the only ones who have the guts to confront paramilitary and mafia politicians.

No hay nada que indigne más que ver al diablo haciendo hostias. En Colombia es normal ver a los políticos del élite con menos autoridad moral critican el opocisión. Lo más infame es que lo hacen con un doble moral… esto está claro, los congresistas de la derecha que están involucrado en el paramilitarismo no tienen el derecho para criticar nosotros.
Nuestros congresistas del Polo son los únicos que tengan los pantalones para enfrentar los políticos del paramilitarismo y la mafia.
Manuel Céspedes Martínez, Medellín

The Polo has become the sole democratic opposition in Colombia in the eyes of the people. The régime sees it as an enemy to contain and has unleashed the narco paramilitary dogs… Each day, the president, ministers and advisors make up all kinds of lies to discredit it.
This strategic confrontation aims to change the opposition’s democratic objectives into a conciliatory attitude acceptable to the régime… the blackmail consists in saying: be a tame opposition or your destiny will be that of the Unión Patriótica. Others demand the Polo becomes a moderate party - the elite and the press give lessons in how to be ‘sensible’.

El Polo se ha convertido la única oposición democrática de Colombia en los ojos del pueblo. El régimen lo ve como un enemigo a contener y le lanza los perros de presa del narcoparamilitarismo. Presidente, ministros y asesores inventan a diario toda clase de falsedades para desprestigiarlo.
Esta confrontación estratégica se la reserva al proyecto de cambiar los objetivos democráticos de la oposición por una actitud conciliadora aceptable para el régimen… el chantaje consiste en decir: o es esa oposición mansa o su destino es el de la Unión Patriótica. Otros demandan que el Polo se hace un partido moderado - el elite y la prensa hace coros para dar lecciones de sensatez.
Jaime Caicedo, Polo candidate in Bogotá

Militants in the Polo are clear that election campaigns are a means to raise consciousness and build democracy, and whatever the election results, we will have overcome fear through our participation in politics.

Los militantes en el Polo tienen claro que las campañas electorales son los medios para hacer pedagogía y construir la democracía, y que cualquiera sean los resultados de las elecciones, tenemos una ganancia por nuestro participación en el simple hecho de vencer el temor.
Rosalba Durán Forero, Bogotá

What there is to be done now is to learn and discuss all the diverse positions that Polistas have, and not end up in splits and contradictions. The Colombian people want the Polo to continue building an alternative party without mafias, bureaucrats or traditional authoritarianism.

Lo que hay que hacer ahora es entender y discutir toda la diversidad deposturas en el seno de las todas polistas, y no salir en desbandada y contradicciones. Quiera pueblo colombiano que es el Polo siga construyendo un partido alternativo sin mafias, burocratas, ni autoritarismos desfasados.
Juan Carlos Cortázar, Viotá

Our party is a leftist party. Many people ask why we don’t call it a ‘centre left’ party and I tell them; because I don’t know what the centre is. I think that in Colombia there are two proposals: one of the right, that supports, strengthens and consolidates the current inequity, and another of the left, where we want to change this state of affairs.
In this context, the centre shamelessly flirts with the right. I want the term ‘leftist’ to be used without fear in Colombia, without demonizing this position. I don’t speak of an armed left, but a democratic left, where we propose to make substantial changes and reforms in Colombian society through electoral politics.

Nuestro partido es de izquierda. Mucha gente pregunta por qué no decimos de ’centro izquierda’, y respondo: porque yo no sé muy bien qué es el centro. Creo que en Colombia hay dos propuestas: una de derecha, que tiende a apuntalar, a reforzar, a consolidar un status inequitativo, y otra de izquierda, de quienes queremos cambiar ese estado de cosas.
En este contexto, el centro es una especie de coqueteo vergonzante con la derecha. Yo quiero que en Colombia el término ’izquierda’ se asimile sin temor, sin satanizar esa posición. No hablo de una izquierda armada, sino de una izquierda democrática, donde nos proponemos realizar cambios y reformas sustanciales en la sociedad colombiana por la vía electoral.
Carlos Gaviria Díaz, Polo Democrático president

It pleases me to see a leftist democratic party united to achieve a single objective: to take power from Colombia’s oligarchic régime on the basis of an alternative leftist program.

Alegria siento de ver un partido democrático de izquierda unido para el logro de una solo objetivo: llegar al poder sobre la base de una propuesta alternativa de izquierda frente al régimen oligarquico en Colombia.
Carlos Restrepo, Barrio Santo Domingo Savio, Medellín

Contrary to what columnists in the oligarchic press have said, the Polo doesn’t have to ask anyone’s permission to make politics, but we don’t want more bosses or caudillos in the Polo. No more political currents or small group retinues; we want to consolidate the organisation and its political position and we need a leadership of the democratic left and not of the centre right.

De lo contrario que los columnistas de los diarios oligárquicos han dichan, el Polo no tiene pedir permiso a nadie para hacer política, pero no queremos más jefes ni caudillos en el Polo. No más corrientes políticos or pequeños sequitos grupistas; queremos es consolidar la organización y la posición política, y necesitamos un liderazgo de izquierda democrática y no de centro derecha.
Luis Manuel Rueda Álvarez, Bogotá

The elite has revealed its true intentions in relation to the Polo Democrático. It is only interested in its division, its destruction, and the creation, for the nth time, of a ‘new left’ - an idea so old it is worn out.
In the not so distant past, the dominant régime resorted, with the same objective, to a dirty war. Now they want a left in their image, thinking and acting as they do, to be used by them as a disguise. A ‘left’ just like the right, in other words.
But the Polo was created for a political mass struggle. The Polo’s rightist enemies are afraid of this and do not want to admit that resistance has found a channel of political expression.

El elite ha mostrado su reales intenciones con relación al Polo Democrático. Le interesa únicamente su división, su destrucción y la creación, por enésima vez, de una ‘nueva izquierda’ – envejecida ya de tanto trajinada.
En el pasado no tan lejano, el régimen dominante recurrió, para lo mismo, a la guerra sucia. Ahora, ellos quieren una izquierda a su imagen y semejanza, que piense como ellos, que actúe como ellos, que les sirva de disfraz. Una ‘izquierda’ que sea como la derecha.
Pero el Polo fue creado por una lucha política de masas. Los enemigos del Polo desde la derecha le temen a eso y no quieren admitir que la resistencía ha encontrado un canal de expresión político.
Partido Comunista Colombiano statement on the Polo Democrático

The comments in the press against the opposition are perverse, Uribista. Why are there no articles about Colombia’s sadness; the hunger, poverty, exclusion, the forced disappearances, the countless killings, the paramilitaries…?

Los comentarios de la prensa contra la oposición son perversos, uribistas. ¿Porqué no hay ningún artículos sobre la tristeza de Colombia, el hambre, la pobreza, la exclusion, las desapariciónes forzadas, los asesinatos no cuentan, los paramilitares…?
Roberto Tinganá, Tumaco

Democrats like the Polo Democrático, without arms, and from Jorge Eliécer Gaitán’s time, have demanded and tried to show the selfish, mean and violent elite that the country is for all - not just for a few landowners and factory bosses.
The government and the ruling class that continues managing Colombia have not changed anything fundamental; they haven’t made any true effort to alleviate poverty, leaving citizens in ignorance and the communities they are born into in inequality, injustice and barbarity.

Los demócraticos, como el Polo Democrático, sin armas y desde los tiempos de Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, se han esforzado por reclamar, denunciar y demostrarles a nuestras élites egoístas, mezquinas y violentas, que el país es de todos, y no de unos cuantos terratenientes y caballeros de industria.
El gobierno y la clase dirigente que sigue manejando a Colombia no han cambiado nada fundamental; no han hecho esfuerzos verdaderos por arrebatar las muchedumbres a la pobreza, los ciudadanos a la ignorancia, las comunidades a los males que nacen de la desigualdad, la injusticia y en la barbarie.

Rocio Ordóñez, La Candelaría, Bogotá

Why don’t the Presidential Palace and the editorials of the newspapers attack the Uribista parties that are in collusion with the paramilitaries and have their Senators and Congressional representatives in jail?
There is not a single article or comment about this - much less a presidential statement, but there are interventions in the Polo’s internal debates, aiming at influencing its political positions and changing its leftist character.

¿Por qué desde la Casa de Nariño y los editorials de los periódicos no se interpela a los partidos Uribistas de tanta convivencia con el paramilitarismo, con senadores y representantes en la cárcel?
No hay una solo artículo o comentarios al respecto, menos un comunicado de la Presidencia de la República, como sí lo hacen para intervenir en los debates internos del Polo, que busca definer posiciones políticos y su carácter izquierdista.
Carlos Lozano,Voz

The fight for justice, equality and liberty... in Colombia’s politics, the Polo is the only possibility to achieve indigenous rights and the social construction of justice and equality.

La lucha por la justicia, la igualdad y la libertad... en el político Colombiano, el Polo es la única posibilidad para articular los derechos de los indígenas y la construcción social de justicia y equidad.
Lázaro Cortés, Quibdó, Chocó

The most important thing is that the Polo maintains its presence, its vigorous and pluralist character, and that it doesn’t get worn down in opposition but instead continues to confidently advance serious policies of change.
There is much to do; the Polo has great tasks ahead of it, and the first is to learn and teach the fundamentals of democracy.
Colombia needs a true democracy, and the most important task of the Polo is to defeat the traditional clientilism, scepticism and violence of this country and continue offering an alternative to a society whose politicians still represent venality and corruption.

Lo más importante es que el Polo mantenga su presencia, su carácter, vigoroso y pluralista, que no se desgaste en la mera oposición y avance las policias serias de cambio con confianza.
Hay mucho por hacer; el Polo tiene grandes tareas en ese proceso, y la principal de ellas es a la vez aprender y enseñar los fundamentos de la democracia.
Colombia necesita una democracia verdadera, y la tarea más importante del Polo es vencer el clientelismo tradicional, el escepticismo y la violencia de este país y continuar como un alternativo a una sociedad cuyos políticos todavía representan venalidad y corrupción.

William Ospina, poet

Not one step back!
¡Ni un paso atrás!
Campaign poster, Barrio Las Cruces, Bogotá

Translations: paul.jisv

Taganga, Caribbean

2007-09-20T19:06:00.000-05:00

La costa Caribe, Colombia. Photograph: Jorge Silva 1966

Colombia's elite fears Chávez's influence

2007-09-19T19:37:00.000-05:00

Not since his Colombian vice president, Francisco de Paula Santander, conspired to assassinate Caracas born Simón Bolívar in Bogotá in 1828, has a Venezuelan so stirred political opinions and passions in its neighbour as President Hugo Chávez has done.

Bolívar survived the infamous ‘Black September Night’ attempt against his life, but Colombia’s continued opposition to his united Latin America dream disillusioned him, until, dispirited and disheartened, he resigned as president a short time after.

In 2007, Colombians are once again contesting and debating a Venezuelan leader’s ideas - this time, President Chávez’s ‘Bolívarian revolution’ and his hope to reprise the Liberator’s ‘one America’ dream.

That these ideas come replete with new inspiration drawn from Marx, Lenin, and even Trotsky, have sharpened the debate in conservative Colombia and heightened the elite’s fear that Chávez’s influence could upset their closed, privileged political order.

In several Colombian states, particularly on the Caribbean coast, Bolivarian circles have been organised, taking after the barrio and union organising committees in Venezuela, and Colombia’s leftist opposition Polo Democrático coalition organises amongst the 2 million Colombian immigrants in Venezuela, ensuring that the revolution’s ideas are brought back into Colombia.

In Barranquilla, Colombia’s principal Caribbean port, barrio and social activists, union organisers and some Polo Democrático members have united in the Corriente Bolivariana Colombiana (Colombian Bolivarian Current), a political organisation that claims almost 5,000 members and has 50 candidates standing in the October local elections.

Jorge Urueta, one of the Bolivarian candidates, explains that the movement began among Colombian immigrants in Caracas, ‘at first in response to President Álvaro Uribe’s reelection’ in 2006. Returning immigrants then continued to organise in Colombia itself, ‘increasing gradually in numbers,’ says Urueta, ‘until there are now Bolivarian movements in at least 5 states.’

‘This is a social movement against poverty in Colombia,’ says Oscar Manduca, a Bolivarian organiser and candidate in Atlántico state on the Caribbean coast, ‘Venezuela’s revolution can help change things here through solidarity and cooperation across the frontier.’

In some communities near the capital, Bogotá, where Colombians have elected leftist activists to local consejos and juntas, cooperation agreements have been signed with Venezuela that grant scholarships to allow workers’ children to study in Caracas, and offer free medical care to the poorest who cannot afford Colombia’s privatised health care.

Carlos Felipe Flórez organises the Movimiento Bolivariano de Colombia S A (sin armas) - the Bolivarian Movement of Colombia (without arms) - that is presenting an electoral challenge to the rightist caudillos that control politics on the Colombia frontier in Santander state. He explains that no Bolivarian activist ‘receives even one peso from Venezuela. Agreements are made to benefit workers and the poorest, not politicians.’

In the October elections, Colombia’s Bolivarian candidates hope to gain at least 20,000 votes, and more positions on local consejos and juntas. A national congress is planned to take place in December to decide on issues such as the Bolivarian movement’s relation to the Polo Democrático, and to elect candidates to contest future Senate and Congressional elections.

These small steps taken to bring Venezuela’s Bolivarian ideas to Colombia have now received encouragement from an extremely unlikely source - far right Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who recently invited President Chávez himself to negotiate with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc), and try to make progress towards ending their war against the state.

Colombia’s elite are incensed at the invitation to Chávez - editorials and columnists have devoted unprecedented space to criticising their own president, and to their fears about Chávez’s ‘intervention’ in Colombia’s politics.

‘The president has given Chávez a golden opportunity to interfere in our affairs,’ wrote columnist Rafael Nieto in the pre-eminent political affairs magazine, Semana. ‘Now Chávez doesn’t need to explain if he wants to say something about Colombia, and intervention in our politics will be difficult to manage… Polo Democrático leaders going to Caracas and Bolivarian officials in Bogotá could become a daily occurrence.’

Saúl Hernández, writing in the pro government newspaper, El Tiempo, agrees. ‘Chávez will install himself in the heart of Colombian politics,’ he wrote, questioning why ‘Uribe has invited him when there exists such an abysmal ideological difference… this inconceivable act is the equivalent of the intervention of a Soviet leader in the affairs of the United States during the Cold War.’

Even the liberal El Espectador complains that the invitation ‘gives Chávez an opportunity on a silver plate to intervene in politics… he could obtain leadership in Colombia that hasn’t been possible until now.’

Colombia’s media has been implacably hostile to Venezuela and its Bolivarian revolution since Chávez was first elected president in 1998. It is standard to use terms such as ‘dictator’, ‘caudillo’ and ‘communist’ in news coverage, and there is little attempt to learn what is actually happening in Venezuela, or to try to understand why Chávez is so popular.

Venezuelan commentator Gabriel Bustamante believes that Colombia’s journalists ‘don’t know, and don’t want to know, anything positive’ about the changes in his country. ‘Revolutions threaten their privileges, so there is a need to create ‘Chávezphobia’ - an excessive and irrational fear about Chávez and even Bolívar to try to stop Colombians being influenced.’

‘Chávez is a traditional, dictatorial caudillo, and he intends to export his revolution with aggressive diplomacy,’ comments El Tiempo, to prove Bustamante’s point. Curiously neglecting to mention any far right military dictatorships, the editorial continues, ‘Caudillos like Chávez have historically impeded the consolidation of liberal democracy in Latin America.’

Further comments in Colombia’s limited media have been even more extreme, indicating that the elite would prefer that the war continues rather than Chávez gain influence in Colombia through his efforts to end it. ‘Don’t forget that Chávez is an extremely active politician with aspirations to unite the Americas,’ writes Alfredo Rangel in the business magazine Cambio, ‘Peace in Colombia will advance his ideas, and that would threaten our institutional stability and our conservative political culture.’

Álvaro Forero Tascón, in El Espectador, is more explicit: ‘Now Chávez is invited he won’t leave. It has been difficult for Chávez to have influence in Colombia because it is a conservative country, but he has been patiently waiting and his interference was just a matter of time, but it is preferable that the war continues than Chávez be involved in Colombia’s affairs.’

This critical reception to the invitation to Chávez has had some effect - Uribe curtailed Chávez’s visit to Colombia in August, and forced the Venezuelan president to meet him at an isolated hacienda rather than allow his presidential motorcade to travel through the capital. A meeting with opposition Polo Democrático leaders had to held after midnight, in private at the Venezuelan Embassy, and even Chávez’s request to visit Bolívar’s historic hacienda in central Bogotá was denied lest he came into contact with ordinary Colombians.

The government has also responded to increasing cooperation between the Colombian opposition and Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution. A Corriente Bolivariana Colombiana political meeting in Baranoa on the Caribbean coast was raided by the president’s DAS intelligence service in May.

Fifteen agents arrested visiting Venezuelan Congressional deputy José Luis Pirela, who had come to finalise an agreement offering scholarships to children to study in Caracas, and forced him into a military helicopter. Pirela was then unceremoniously deported on the La Guajira desert frontier between the two countries.

A short time later Baranoa’s mayor, Carlos Zambrano, began to receive death threats from the far right paramilitaries, but remained defiant. ‘It is normal for movements with similar politics to have contact across frontiers,’ he said, ‘no-one can deny that America is involved in Colombia’s politics even to the point that the US sends helicopters and guns to fuel the war. All that we are doing is arranging scholarships for poor children to study.’

‘Colombia does not accept foreign interference from any country,’ a DAS statement said after this incident, apparently without irony, ‘Colombia does not accept attempts at destabilizing our democracy that respects liberties,’ while El Tiempo justified the raid, claiming that contacts between Colombians and Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution were ‘contrary to the free determination of the people.’

Constitutional experts disagreed. Lawyer Juan Manuel Charry said there was no crime that an elected deputy from Venezuela visited an elected mayor in Colombia, and legal expert Francisco José Sintura pointed out that Colombia’s constitutional law ‘only prohibits rebellion, sedition, asonada and conspiracy. A law prohibits foreigners from participating in election campaigns, but that is not what is happening here.’

However, as Colombia is a highly militarised state, the Armed Forces Commander, Freddy Padilla, thought it appropriate to comment too. ‘I don’t think there is interference from the Venezuelan government on the Caribbean coast,’ he stated, apparently disagreeing with the intelligence service’s assessment, but he then said, ‘Bolivarian circles are spreading all over Latin America, and particularly here in Colombia we want to prevent this from happening.’

This statement raises the question as to how the Colombian military, while accepting that there is no ‘foreign interference’, will then ‘prevent’ Colombians from organising political movements influenced by Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution - particularly as the intelligence service states that Colombia ‘respects liberties.’

Colombia’s elite has never been so isolated in Latin America as they are now - just Perú, México and some Central American states still share their rightist economic liberalism and deference to the United States - and now Colombians themselves are beginning to gain confidence and inspiration from President Chávez and Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution.

Bogotá, 19 de septiembre de 2007

________________________

Sources

La última esperanza, report in Semana, Bogotá, 3 de septiembre de 2007
Latinoamérica, en la mira chavista, Eduardo Posada Carbó, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 1 de junio de 2007
Amenazas de muerte para alcalde, Alfonso Cervantes, El Tiempo, Bogotá, junio de 2007
¿Qué sucede en Colombia y por qué su importancia para Venezuela? David Javier Medina, Aporrea.org, Caracas, 9 de septiembre de 2007
Diputado chavista habló de plan para ‘Presidencia bolivariana’ en Colombia, Roberto Llanos Rodado, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 29 de mayo de 2007
Por el liderazgo en América Latina, Simón Consalvi, El Nacional, Caracas, 2 de septiembre de 2007
¿Qué está cocinando Chávez?, Saúl Hernández, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 4 de septiembre de 2007
Ingreso inusual de funcionarios venezolanos a Colombia viene desde el 2005, según el DAS, report in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 29 de mayo de 2007
Contribución a la paz en Colombia, Vladimir Villegas, Aporrea.org, Caracas, 7 de septiembre de 2007
El fenómeno Chávez en América Latina, report in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 20 de mayo de 2007
Chávez, el nuevo protagonista, editorial in El Espectador, Bogotá, 19 de agosto de 2007
La caja de Pandora, Rafael Nieto, Semana, 27 de agosto de 2007
La sin salida de Chávez, Álvaro Forero Tascón, El Espectador, Bogotá, 27 de agosto de 2007
Lógicas Paradójicas, Alfredo Rangel, Cambio, Bogotá, 25 de agosto de 2007

Río Guapí, Colombia

2007-09-13T12:18:00.000-05:00

Pescadores en la costa Pacífica Colombiana

La Costa Pacífica

2007-09-13T12:13:00.000-05:00

Pacific coast rainforest, Colombia

A mountain to climb in Guatemala

2007-09-12T09:39:00.000-05:00

Álvaro Colom, the centre left candidate of the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE – National Unity of Hope) party, won the first round of Guatemala’s presidential elections on Sunday. However, instead of raising hopes that this result might herald the first progressive president since Jacobo Árbenz was overthrown in a US backed coup in 1954, it has instead shown how difficult it is for the left to make advances in this Central American republic.

Colom won almost a million votes (28%) to defeat the principal rightwing candidate, military general Otto Pérez Molina, who took 750,000 votes (23%). The obvious concern amongst Colom’s supporters is that those who voted for other rightwing parties in this first round will now transfer their votes to Pérez Molina in the run-off election due to take place on 4 November.

This is exactly what happened in Guatemala’s previous presidential election in 2003. Álvaro Colom also stood in that election as the left candidate, and advanced to the run-off election where he challenged the rightist, Óscar Berger. The united forces of the right then defeated Colom 54 to 46 per cent to hand the presidency to Berger.

On Sunday, twelve rightwing parties competed for the presidency against just four parties considered to be on the left. Apart from Colom’s UNE, the other left parties were eclipsed by the multitude of small parties led by rightwing caudillos who, according to Guatemalan political commentator Alexander Sequén Mónchez, coerced or bought votes.

Contrasting his country to México to the north, where the appeal of Manuel López Obrador’s combative and uncompromising leftist program forced the right to steal the 2006 elections there with fraud, and to El Salvador to the south, where the Marxist FMLN (Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional) is the second political force and dominates politics in the cities, Sequén Mónchez says the left in Guatemala lacks tradition and organisation.

Even the capital, La Ciudad de Guatemala, is controlled by the right, contrary to the trend of capital cities in Latin America being won by the radical left recently. In fact, former rightist president Álvaro Arzú, who has been the capital’s mayor for the last four years, was easily reelected on 9 September, and in the presidential election, Pérez Molina gained more votes in the city than Colom and all the other left parties put together.

‘The left has been excluded from participation in politics through repression and violence,’ says writer Carolina Escobar Sarti, ‘but also, the left has not been as clear with radical, progressive policies as the left in México, nor has it organised in the street or in the barrios with an everyday, on the ground presence as the FMLN has done in El Salvador.’

The experience of the presidential campaign seems to bear out this assessment. More than 50 candidates and campaign workers have been assassinated, including 15 members of Colom’s UNE, and also seven supporters of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchú, who was the first indigenous Mayan in Guatemala’s history to stand as a presidential candidate.

The indigenous have long been excluded, despite comprising more than 58 per cent of the population, through military repression and the racist denial of their culture and languages that has left politics in Guatemala in the hands of a tiny elite. Although this is now changing slightly, there are still few opportunities for the indigenous - or the left - to participate in the country’s formal ‘liberal’ democracy.

There are no elections for governors, senators, or state representatives as Guatemala has neither an upper house nor state legislatures, and governors are appointed by the president. Representatives in the national Congress rely heavily on traditional patronage or violence to secure their positions, and the assassinations of leftist and indigenous activists serve to deter opposition.

In this election campaign, Álvaro Colom has had to travel in a helicopter to avoid being attacked, and he was accompanied at all times by a doctor with extensive experience in bullet wounds, while his campaign manager, José Carlos Marroquín, was fortunate to survive a grenade attack on his car.

Aside from this intimidation and violence, the left in this election ‘has not succeeded in positioning their proposals and vision at the centre of the political debate,’ reiterates Sarti, ‘the themes have been a free trade agreement with the US, and security ‘hard fist’ policies that reprise the repression of the military dictatorships. There has been no debate about Guatemala’s great social concerns.’

‘The election has shown the conservative side of Guatemalan society,’ concurs an editorial in the newspaper El Periódico de Guatemala, ‘the parties on the right have dominated while the principal parties on the left have not even presented programs with socialist policies, much less Chávista policies,’ it stated, referring to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution. ‘The political left is almost nonexistent in Guatemala, eclipsed by decades of continuous governments of the right.’

Colom has campaigned on a moderate, social democratic platform that emphasises a continuation of the economic liberalism policies of the current conservative president, while claiming to be able to distribute the ‘benefits’ of these policies more equitably. While this is sufficient to be considered ‘leftist’ in Guatemala’s political context, it has clearly failed to attract mass support from the majority of Guatemalans who continue to live in desperate poverty under these policies.

Rigoberta Menchú’s presidential campaign has had similar failings. Her candidacy has been important in cutting through the racism and elitist, exclusionary attitudes of the traditional political class, but she has not used the small space she has opened to confront the country’s central problems of poverty, exclusion and indigenous rights.

‘Despite the support of Bolivian President Evo Morales, that country’s first indigenous leader, Rigoberta doesn’t want to be seen as a leftist. She has chosen to be independent, repudiating the support of the left parties,’ writes Guatemalan sociologist Gonzálo Sichar Moreno. ‘The space she has is the fruit of much struggle, but political debate continues to be restricted and elitist.’

Menchú also did not propose to alter the country’s economic policies, and as a result, a clear rift could be seen between Guatemala’s peasant worker organizations, which reject free trade, and the ‘Mayan intellectuals’ in Menchú’s party. ‘It was decided not to support Menchú’s political movement,’ said Rafael González, an indigenous leader, ‘as indigenous people, we do not identify with its politics.’

This has left Colom, despite his moderation, as the repository of the hopes of the left in this election. That he still has a mountain to climb is shown by the fact that the far right former military dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, despite an international arrest warrant issued against him for massacres committed during his repressive rule, was elected to Congress at the same time as Colom won the first presidential round.

Guatemala’s ‘strong rightist tradition and history of military repression, violence and impunity continues to be an obstacle to change,’ writes Sichar Moreno, ‘the situation of the left is probably worse than when it was illegal under the dictators. There is a need for a mass, progressive political coalition to end the right’s domination.’

There is still a chance, and some signs of hope, that the right can be defeated in the final presidential round. Although Pérez Molina took the capital, Colom’s party defeated the right in 17 states - Pérez Molina won in 5 states - and the Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza is now the largest party in the Congress after almost doubling its share of seats to 48.

Despite his moderate social democratic policies, should Álvaro Colom become president, the victory will be as momentous for Guatemala as the elections of Rafael Correa in Ecuador or Evo Morales in Bolivia, and will be further confirmation that Latin America’s left turn continues.

_________________________________

9 September 2007 results:

Álvaro Colom (UNE - left) 917,000 (28.2%)
Otto Pérez Molina (Partido Patriota - right) 767,000 (23.5%)
Alejandro Giammettei (Gana - government party) 562,000 (17.2%)
Rigobertu Menchú (Encuentro - left) 100,000 (3.2%)

In total, left parties obtained 1,107,000 votes.
Rightwing parties obtained 1,909,000 votes.

Congress:
La Unidad Nacional de la Esperanza (UNE) 48 diputados
Gran Alianza Nacional (Gana) 35
Partido Patriota (PP) 30
Encuentro (Rigoberta Menchú’s party) 4

In total, of the 158 seats in Congress, left parties obtained 55, but rightwing parties obtained 103.

In the capital, La Ciudad de Guatemala, Pérez Molina took 227,000 votes to the left’s 205,000.

_________________________________________

Sources

La izquierda en Guatemala: del levantamiento a la pérdida del horizonte, Gonzalo Sichar Moreno, Revista Inciativa Socialista, Madrid, agosto de 2007
Elecciones 2007 en Guatemala: la izquierda postergada y necesaria, Andrés Cabanas, Telesur, Caracas, 6 de septiembre de 2007
Álvaro Colom supara a Otto Pérez, Erika Marroquín, Siglo Vientiuno, La Ciudad de Guatemala, 10 de septiembre de 2007
Campaña negra contra Colom, report in Siglo Vientiuno, La Ciudad de Guatemala, 9 de septiembre de 2007
¿Presidenta Menchú? Louise Reynolds, Noticias Aliadas, Lima, 30 de mayo de 2007
Asesinados 51 políticos en Guatemala previo a las elecciones del 9-S, report on Telesur, Caracas, 9 de septiembre de 2007
Un escenario político a la derecha, Haroldo Shetemul, Prensa Libre, La Ciudad de Guatemala, 9 de septiembre de 2007
El rincón de Casandra, Jacques Seidner, El Periódico, La Ciudad de Guatemala, 12 de septiembre de 2007
Asesinada candidate a concejal del partido de Rigoberta Menchú en Guatemala, report on Telesur, Caracas, 29 de agosto de 2007
Un Congreso con pesos y contrapesos, Vinicio Sic, Siglo Vientiuno, La Ciudad de Guatemala, 12 de septiembre de 2007
El miedo me llevó a rebelarme ante las injusticias, Vicente Palermo, La Insignia, Madrid, 5 de septiembre de 2007

President Chávez's call to unite in the PSUV

2007-08-31T09:31:00.000-05:00

Venezuela doesn’t want one more political party… the PSUV should unite all Venezuelans disposed to fight to construct socialism in our country: as much those militants in leftist political organisations and activists in the social movements as compatriots that until this moment have not organised, or, deceived by mistakes and deviations, have been disillusioned and have left political activity.

Venezuela no quiere un partido más… el PSUV debe unir todos los Venezolanos y Venezolanas dispuestos a luchar por construir el socialismo en nuestro país: tanto a los y las militantes de las agrupaciones políticas de izquierda, a los miembros de los movimientos sociales, así como a las y los compatriotas que hasta este momento no militaban o que, decepcionados por los errors o desviaciones, dejaron de militar en las organizaciones.
Why a party and not a political front? Because the revolutionary process is beginning and we have great challenges to confront, the greatest possible unity is needed in our ranks. Sure, a political front can bring together and unite various political parties that share a common political program, however, these parties would keep their individual structures; organise independently and have their own leaderships.

¿Por qué un partido y no un frente politico? Porque se inicia una nueva era en nuestro proceso revolucionario y tenemos grandes desafíos por enfrentar, que necesitan de la mayor unidad posible en nuestras filas. Y si bien es cierto que un frente político implica integrar en una unidad a varios partidos políticos que comparten un programa político común; sin embargo, esos partidos conservarían sus estructuras, su autonomía organizativa, sus propios comandos.
Don’t forget what happened in Chile. The Unidad Popular was a political front, and while the government’s enemies united to attack it, the contradictions between the diverse parties in this political coalition, the different lines followed even within the same ministry, in agreement with the political colour of whoever occupied each position, seriously weakened President Allende’s government.

No olvide la experiencia chilena. La Unidad Popular era un frente político y, mientras los enemigos del proceso se unían para atacarlo, las contradicciones entre los diversos partidos de esa coalición política, las líneas diferentes que se seguían dentro de un mismo ministerio, de acuerdo al color político de quien ocupaba cada cargo, debilitaron seriamente al gobierno del presidente Allende.
Our process has to point us all in the same direction. We need a political organisation that doesn’t get tied up in internal fights. Bolívar’s dramatic words, written on 20 January 1830, imploring Colombians to remain united, reflect this theme:

'Compatriots, hear my voice at the end of my political career: in the name of Colombia, I ask you, I implore you, to remain united and not become assassins of the homeland or enemies of ourselves.'

Nuestro proceso exige que apuntemos todos en la misma dirección. Necesitamos un instrumento político que no se desgaste en luchas intestinas. Sobre este tema me siento interpretado por las dramáticas palabras de Bolívar, escritas el 20 enero del año 1830, donde suplicaba a los colombianos que permaneciesen unidos:

'Compatriotas, escuchad mi última voz al terminar mi carrera política: a nombre de Colombia os pido, os ruego que permanezcaís unidos, para que no seáis los asesinos de la patria y vuestros propios verdugos.'
One of our first tasks should be to make massive efforts at raising consciousness, before composing the party’s definitive constitution. We shouldn’t forget that it is necessary to prepare a great mass of aspirants, especially those who have never been political activists before.
A person ideologically informed will be better prepared to elect party leaders and protect themselves from the political manipulation of unscrupulous people who could try to influence their vote.

Una de nuestras primeras tareas debe ser realizar jornadas masivas de formación ideological, previas a la constitución definitive del partido. No debemos olvidar que es necesario preparar a esa gran masa de aspirantes, especialmente a aquellos que nunca antes han militado en una organización política.
Una persona ideológicamente formada estará mejor preperada para realizar una correcta elección de las o los dirigentes del partido, y podrá defenderse de la manipulación política que algunos inescrupulosos pudieran querer hacer en el momento de la elección.
'If my death contributes to the end of factions and parties and strengthens the Union, I will go peacefully to my grave,' wrote Bolívar, a short time before he died.
Let’s comply with his final will! Let’s leave aside divisions and unite in one great party – the United Socialist Party of Venezuela!

'Si mi muerte contribuye para que cesen los partidos y se consolide la Unión, yo bajaré tranquilo al sepulcro,' escribía Bolívar poco antes de morir.
¡Cumplamos su última voluntad! ¡Dejemos a un lado las divisions y unámonos todas y todos en un solo gran partido socialista – el Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela!

____________________

Translation: paul.jisv

Venezuela: union workers debate the PSUV

2007-08-31T08:06:00.000-05:00

The revolutionary process in this moment has its epicentre en Latin America and more still in Venezuela. The Venezuelan working class has the responsibility, we could say, to achieve our political unification in order to develop fully workers’ consciousness. It is fundamental that the workers should organise a single party: the PSUV.

El proceso revolucionario en estos momentos tiene su epicentro en América Latina y más en concreto en Venezuela. La clase obrera venezolana tenemos la responsabilidad, pudiéramos decirlo así, de lograr nuestra unificación política para desarrollar plenamente la conciencia de los Trabajadores. Eso es lo fundamental que debe hacer la clase obrera en estos momentos y con la creación del nuevo partido: el PSUV.

UNT organiser and PSUV activist Luis Primo

The PSUV should not be a dogmatic and/or a Stalinist party, but should have much debate of ideas, exchange of proposals and internal democracy. Sharing this vision, we hope to contribute to the strengthening of a great socialist party, and at the same time a great workers’ union movement at the service of the socialist revolution in Venezuela.

PSUV no debe ser un partido dogmático y/o stalinista, sino que tenga mucho debate de ideas, intercambio de propuestas y democracia interna. Partiendo de esa coincidencia va entonces nuestra opinión, con la cual esperamos contribuir al fortalecimiento de un gran partido socialista, y a la vez de un gran movimiento sindical clasista al servicio de la revolución socialista en Venezuela.
Union Nacional de Trabajadores letter to President Chávez

The workers have to come to one conclusion: our fight is not in the PSUV, we have to construct our own space, our own party of the workers. A party that defends union independence, that mobilises workers in defence of their rights… fights for the expropriation and socialisation of the means of production. This is socialism, anything less is merely to embellish the capitalist system.
We don’t want a party that simply criticises the government, we want a party that fights for power and a government of the workers.

Los trabajadores tenemos que sacar una sola conclusión: nuestro lugar no está en el PSUV, tenemos que construir nuestro propio espacio, nuestro propio partido de los trabajadores. Un partido que defienda la autonomía sindical, que movilice a los trabajadores en defensa de sus derechos…que luche por la expropiación y socialización de los medios de producción. Eso es socialismo, lo demás es tratar de embellecer al sistema capitalista. No queremos un partido que sólo viva de las críticas al gobierno, queremos un partido que luche por el poder y el gobierno de los trabajadores.
Orlando Chirino, Partido Revolucionario Socialista leader and UNT/CCURA faction organiser

PSUV should be an organisation where there exists the most absolute internal democracy to express all ideas, for debate, for the construction of agreements and also to bring out differences. Socialism, and the political organisation that intends to lead to its application, are not synonymous with a single line of thinking, but with a contrast of opinions, of collective discussion, of a democratic synthesis of ideas forged in revolutionary diversity.

PSUV debe una organización donde exista la más absoluta democracia interna para expresar las ideas de cada uno, para el debate, para la construcción de acuerdos y para poder manifestar también las discrepancias. El socialismo, y la organización política que pretende ayudar a su concreción, no son sinónimos de pensamiento único sino de contraste de opiniones, de elaboración colectiva, de síntesis democrática forjada en la diversidad revolucionaria.
Where there is monolithic thinking, it is because there is no internal regime that permits free expression. The best thing for revolutions are organisations where the people feel involved; where they can give their opinion and decide freely. Or as Lenin said, ‘Light, light and more light’ for all. The best information, the most liberty to give opinion about all aspects of the organisation that we choose to construct.

Donde hay pensamiento monolítico es porque no hay un régimen interno que permita expresarse libremente. Lo mejor para las revoluciones son las organizaciones donde el pueblo se siente protagonista, donde puede opinar y decidir. O al decir de Lenin "luz, luz, y mas luz” para todos. La mayor información, la mayor libertad para opinar sobre todos los aspectos de la organización que uno elije construir.
The reason for a united single party should be to organise, create and orient with a political direction, the fight of the masses against capitalist and imperialist oppression – to be a democratic space for the expression and synthesis of the ideas of the revolution and the socialist transition.

La razón de un partido revolucionario unido, debe ser organizar, formar y orientar con dirección política el combate de las masas contra la opresión capitalista e imperialista, ser espacio democrático para la expresión y la síntesis de sus ideas en función de la revolución y de la transición socialista.
Stalin Pérez, UNT national coordinator, CCURA faction and PSUV activist

The PSUV is in a process of construction, there are fights, political struggle, debates, attempts to exclude, and above all, many expectations and hopes of the masses. There are millions who want to participate in politics, to be protagonists and defeat the bureaucrats who want to control the party. This fight could be won or lost, but we prefer to be inside the PSUV to fight for our vision.

El PSUV está en su proceso de construcción, hay luchas, peleas políticas, debates, intentos de exclusión y sobre todo mucha expectativa y ganas de sectores de masas. Ahí están los millones que quieren sumarse a la vida política para ser protagonistas y derrotar a los burócratas que quieren controlarlos. Esta pelea podrá ganarse o no, pero nosotros preferimos para defender un proyecto revolucionario dentro del PSUV.
Sergio García, UNT/CCURA organiser and PRS member who decided to join the PSUV

The PSUV is at the stage of base assemblies and preparing for its first congress.
During this time we have seen desperate attempts by some in power to control this process. We have seen a great fight, like a train crash between right and left in the PSUV.
Revolutionaries are not at the margin of this fight to decide the character and policies of the PSUV… we participate actively in each assembly to defend a party with internal democracy, and without a military structure or vertical discipline. The revolution needs a party of the masses with a program to end capitalism in Venezuela.

El PSUV se encuentra en la etapa de sus asambleas de base y preparando su primer Congreso. Durante estos meses se vieron síntomas de los intentos desesperados por sectores de poder, para controlar todo el proceso. Se viene una gran pelea, como un choque de trenes en el PSUV, entre la derecha y la izquierda.Los revolucionarios no estamos al margen de esta pelea que decidirá el carácter y la política. Participamos activamente en cada asamblea… defender un tipo de partido con democracia interna y sin un modelo de estructura militar ni su disciplina vertical. La revolución necesita un partido de las bases y con un programa para terminar con el capitalismo en Venezuela.PSUV activists in Barrio 23 de enero, Caracas

The battalions and the PSUV could not be organisations to impose on militants. Neither could they be just electoral machines. This is what those who want to be deputies, governors, mayors, congress representatives and other positions, want. Their concern, their strategy and tactics, revolve around electoral participation.

Los batallones y el PSUV no pueden ser organizaciones para las imposiciones a sus militantes. Tampoco pueden ser sólo maquinarias electorales. Esto lo aspiran los que siempre quieren ser diputados, gobernadores, alcaldes, concejales u a otros cargo de elección popular. La preocupación de estos, su estrategía y toda la táctica, girarán en la participación electoral.
There are those who want the PSUV to be the official party of government. To them, it would be of little importance to mortgage the destiny of the party to any arbitrary policies, act of bureaucracy or corruption that government or state functionaries might do.

Hay quienes quieren que el PSUV sea el partido oficial del gobierno. A estos, poco le importará hipotecar el destino del partido a cualquier arbitrariedad, acto de burocracia o corrupción que hagan funcionarios del gobierno o el estado.
Because of bureaucratic pressures, managing huge amounts of money, being in power a long time, and above all, because of the impunity they enjoy, they commit mistakes that the party cannot support. On the contrary, the battalions and the PSUV should be vigilant to ensure this doesn’t happen, and in case it happens, they should be the first who denounce and combat this old practice.

Por la presiones burocráticas, los manejos de alta suma de dinero, por el ejercicio prolongado del poder y sobre todo, por la impunidad que está imperando, cometerán desafueros que el partido no puede avalar. Por el contrario, los batallones y el PSUV deben ser controladores para que esto no suceda y de suceder, deben ser los primeros organismos en denunciar y combatir esta vieja práctica.
UNT/CCURA editorial in Marea Clasista Socialista union newspaper

This desire to participate that in politics that Venezuelans have now – we never saw it before with Acción Democrática. Of course the activists the AD had were completely different. They were bought, in many ways, such as with zinc sheets, construction materials, sand. Like this, AD had a lot of support, but it was populism, no more. But now the situation is very different – now we see many people taking part in the process and wanting to participate from the heart, spontaneously, authentically. People are motivated… the participation is real, disinterested.

Esta vocación por participar que tiene ahora la gente no se había visto nunca antes con la gente de Acción Democrática. Claro que la militancia que ellos tenían era algo completamente diferente. Ellos compraban a la gente, de muchas maneras, por ejemplo con láminas de zinc, con materiales de construcción, con arena. De esa manera llegaron a tener mucha gente, pero eso era populismo, no más. Pero ahora la situación es muy diferente; ahora veo a la gente mucho más comprometida con el proceso de corazón, espontáneo, auténtico. La gente está muy motivada... la participación mucho más real, desinteresada.
Oscar Méndez, PSUV activist, Barrio Catia, Caracas

We know that of all the left in Latin America, Venezuela has a history of sectarianism… a failure to participate in reality. But now the PSUV is beginning to be an organisation very broad from the base – this is real.

Sabemos que tenemos en la izquierda, en toda Latinoamérica, una historia de sectarismo, de falta de participación real. Pero ahora, en el PSUV, se está empezando a dar una organización muy amplia desde la base, eso es real.
María del Carmen Bautista, Barrio San Juan, Caracas

In the case of Lenin we believe that instead of saying that we are not Leninists, it would be good that millions learn about his ideas, his experience… his work with León Trotsky. Also to rescue the true history of the Bolshevik Party that sadly was changed and maltreated for decades by Stalinism.

En el caso de Lenin creemos que mas que comenzar por decir que no somos leninistas, sería bueno que millones conozcan sus ideas, su experiencia… su trabajo junto a León Trotsky. También por rescatar la verdadera historia del partido bolchevique, que lamentablemente fue cambiada y maltratada por décadas de estalinismo.

Chávez said that the PSUV would not be Marxist or Leninist, but Chávez himself, from the beginning of the process to construct the PSUV, planned it to be a party of the bases, distinct from the MVR (Movimiento Quinta República, Chávez’s previous organisation). What the millions of party members have to have clear is that while Chávez’s opinion is of course important, it is his opinion, and like everyone else, he could get it wrong. For this reason, in each battalion assembly we have to make an effort to present our opinion, to debate and decide amongst us all, because the base are those who have the right to decide if the PSUV will become Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyist, Bolivarian, or all of these together.

Chávez dijo que el PSUV no será ni marxista ni leninista, pero el mismo Chávez desde que comenzó el proceso de construcción del PSUV viene planteando que será un partido de las bases, distinto al MVR. Entonces, lo primero que los millones de inscriptos tenemos que tener claro es que la opinión de Chávez sin duda es importante, pero es su opinión, y como todas puede estar equivocada. Por esa razón en cada asamblea de batallón que está naciendo tenemos que esforzarnos por opinar, por debatir y por decidir entre todos, porque somos las bases las que tenemos el derecho a decidir si el PSUV se reconocerá como marxista, leninista, trotskista, bolivariano o todo eso junto.
Stalin Pérez

‘We must instruct ourselves, because we will need all our intelligence, we must stir ourselves because we will need all our enthusiasm, we must organise ourselves, because we will need all our force.’ Antonio Gramsci.

Instrúyanse porque necesitaremos toda nuestra inteligencia, conmuévanse porque necesitaremos todo nuestro entusiasmo, organícense, porque necesitaremos de toda nuestra fuerza.

Antonio Gramsci
Mural in Barrio 23 de enero, Caracas

Bogotá, 31 de agosto de 2007

____________________________________________

Sources

Translations: paul.jisv
Vamos al PSUV con nuestras propuestas clasistas y socialistas, Stalin Pérez interview, Prensa CCURA/UNT report on Aporrea.org, Caracas, 9 de mayo de 2007
PSUV: la izquierda socialista, Jorge Sanmartino, Revista de América, Buenos Aires, agosto de 2007
Los batallones del PSUV, Stalin Pérez, CCURA Marea No.3, Caracas, agosto de 2007
Debates decisivos en la lucha por el socialismo, Ismael Hernández, Revista de América, Buenos Aires, mayo de 2007
Sindicalistas revolucionarios responden al Presidente Chávez, Carta de dirigentes de CCURA, report on Aporrea.org, Caracas, 28 de marzo de 2007
Luis Primo interview in El Militante, on Aporrea.org internet site, Caracas, 30 de marzo de 2007
Ideas sobre medidas socialistas, democracia protagónica y partido, Stalin Pérez, Sergio García, Gonzalo Gómez, Aporrea.org, Caracas, 22 de julio de 2007

Caracas

2007-08-30T06:19:00.000-05:00

La palabra es un arma

Caracas, Plaza de Bolívar, 2007

Venezuela sindicalistas

2007-08-28T08:20:00.000-05:00

Venezuela’s Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT) has at last called on its 2 million workers to unite in the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), despite the bitter infighting and conflicts over tactics, strategy and politics that had threatened the union confederation’s participation in the Bolivarian revolution.

UNT organiser Stalin Pérez called on all workers to organise ‘battalions’ in barrios and workplaces and join the PSUV with ‘our sindicalist and socialist proposals… and our ideas about how to construct a democratic organisation.’ (‘sumarnos al PSUV con nuestras propuestas clasistas y socialistas, y también nuestras ideas acerca de cómo construir una organización democrática.’)

That this call is considered news at all is a reflection on just how antagonistic relations have been between the political factions in the UNT since the confederation was founded in 2003. As Pérez relates, workers ‘are conscious that the UNT is not passing through a good moment… political division and failure to work together affects the workers.’ (‘somos concientes que la UNT no está pasando por un buen momento producto de la división política y la falta de un funcionamiento común que afecta a los trabajadores.’)

The UNT has had a conflictive and often combative history since dissident workers split from Venezuela’s traditional union confederation, the CTV (Congreso de Trabajadores Venezolanos), after CTV president Carlos Ortega participated in the attempted coup d’etat against President Chávez in 2002.

This clientilist, corporatist union close to the discredited elitist party Acción Democrática, has since been eclipsed by the UNT and the new union confederation’s support for Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution. However, the debate between workers organised in different factions in the UNT over the extent to which the union should support the President, has created divisions that have diverted workers into political infighting.

Five political ‘currents’ are fighting for control in the UNT, and the two most important factions - CCURA (Corriente Clasista, Unitaria, Revolucionaria, Autónoma) and FSBT (Fuerza Socialista Bolivariano de Trabajadores) - have been in an often bitter fight to make the UNT an unconditional Chávista union, as the FSBT desires, or to make it more independent, as CCURA wants.

These sincere disagreements, and a democratic debate over the union’s tactics and strategy, could have increased the UNT’s influence as a central force in Venezuelan politics and strengthened organised workers’ participation in the Bolivarian revolution, but the political descended into the personal to the point that the union, dispersed and fractured, almost split.

The last UNT Congress, in 2006, ended in fights, walkouts and the split into the five political factions, but Orlando Chirino, CCURA faction leader, believes it is wrong to describe the divisions as personal. ‘A battle has been fought between two conceptions - on the one hand those who want to tie the union to Chávez, and on the other those who are fighting for sovereignty and an autonomous and independent union movement.’

But UNT organisers in the FSBT faction, such as Jacobo Torres de León, claim the divisions have meant the union has failed to concentrate on organising workers. The FSBT points out that workers’ unionisation rate in Venezuela is still less than 20 per cent, and argues that the union should concentrate on sindicalist demands in workplaces and be close to the President politically to have influence.

Even President Chávez has criticised the UNT’s failure to organise workers in a united union, and he has even called into question ‘the idea that workers and unions are central to the revolution’, choosing instead to emphasise the PSUV’s and the barrio consejos comunales centrality to the revolution.

UNT organiser Pérez, a CCURA faction member but also an activist in the PSUV, questions Chávez’s criticisms, arguing that workers continue to be decisive - ‘workers are the true revolutionary protagonists’ (‘los obreros son los verdaderos protagonistas revolucionarios’) - and should be central to the party and the revolution.

But Chávez’s impatience with the UNT’s infighting took him further earlier this year when he declared to a PSUV political meeting in Caracas that ‘unions should not be autonomous - one must put a stop to that.’ This prompted Orlando Chirino to respond to the President declaring that workers have the right to politicise their unions and be independent of the state.

‘Lenin wrote that unions should be independent… when Stalin took power in Russia and led the state and the party, one of the first things he eliminated was the independence of the unions, precisely against the opinion of Lenin,’ Chirino wrote, and insisting on unions’ right to be sovereign and autonomous, he recalled President Chávez’s statement that ‘the PSUV will not be a Stalinist political party.’

That the UNT has finally called on all workers to join the PSUV does not mean that the dispute between the union’s factions has been resolved. The FSBT believes that this call will move the UNT closer to Chávez, while the CCURA has recognised that the union cannot stand apart from the 5.7 million Venezuelans that have registered an interest in participating in the party.

Pérez realises that massive worker participation in the new party is the best insurance against what he calls ‘bureaucratisation’ and the threat that a clientilist relationship between the PSUV and the union, similar to the relationship between the rightist Acción Democrática and the discredited CTV union in the Nineties, could develop.

‘CCURA will join the PSUV, we will fight for workers’ control, and we want to maintain union autonomy - not for its own sake, but because independence is a revolutionary necessity,’ Pérez says. ‘There is no contradiction between organising in the PSUV to support the revolution, and also having independent unions. Both are part of the same fight towards socialism in Venezuela.’

Bogotá, 28 de agosto de 2007

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Sources

Sindicalistas revolucionarios responden al Presidente Chávez, Carta de dirigentes de CCURA, report on Aporrea.org, Caracas, 28 de marzo de 2007
Stalin Pérez Borges interview on Movimiento Socialista de los Trabajadores internet site, Buenos Aires, 15 de agosto de 2007
Orlando Chirino interview in ISR, Chicago, July 2007
Sr. Presidente: sin Marx, Lenin y la clase obrera, no hay socialismo posible, Miguel Ángel Hernández, Aporrea.org, Caracas, 31 de julio de 2007
La Unión Nacional de Trabajadores: ¿Central Sindical o Frente Revolucionario? Jacobo Torres de Leon, Nuestra América, 19 de marzo de 2006
Compromiso por la unidad, el fortalecimiento y las elecciones de la UNT, CTR/CCURA/TPP/CCUT statement on Aporrea.org, Caracas, 31 de julio de 2007
Corrientes sindicales CCURA/CTR se reúnen para adelantar plan para las elecciones, report on Aporrea.org, Caracas, 5 de julio de 2007
Vamos al PSUV con nuestras propuestas clasistas y socialistas, Stalin Pérez Borges interview, Prensa CCURA/UNT report on Aporrea.org, Caracas, 9 de mayo de 2007

Zócalo, México

2007-08-20T08:43:00.000-05:00

Día de las elecciones, 2006

Paramilitaries return to threaten Medellín's comunas

2007-08-15T08:34:00.000-05:00

Barrio de los Altos de la Torre

After supposedly ‘demobilising’ and turning in their guns in highly publicised ceremonies broadcast live throughout Colombia, resurgent paramilitaries have returned to Medellín’s comunas, assassinating political and barrio organisers and terrorizing communities through forced conscription and displacement.

In testimonies and interviews, residents in the El Salado barrio in Medellín’s central western Comuna 13, and in the Santo Domingo Savio and La Esperanza barrios in Comuna 1 in the northeast, relate how ‘armed men in black’ have returned to militarize their communities.

‘The paramilitaries don’t patrol on the streets with guns in hand… it is an invisible control, with threats, with guns hidden in belts, with forced displacement. Their control is more subtle.’
Antonio, Barrio de La Esperanza

‘There are no men with automatic rifles, but the pressure is felt and it increases… the paramilitaries demand 5,000 pesos each week or there are death threats. The illegal trades in drugs, gasoline and guns are under their control, the girls on the streets at night are theirs… it is true that there are less killings than before, but it is not necessary to have deaths to feel fear.’
Cristina, Barrio de El Salado
Paramilitaries take Medellín

The far right paramilitaries became a strong military force in 1998 after taking over the drug trade after the Medellín cartel had splintered under state onslaught. But fighting for control in the Comunas against leftist influenced militias such as the Comandos Armados Populares, which had been organised to provide ‘justice’ and ‘security’ in workers’ barrios in response to the state’s absence, the paramilitaries were soon forced to rely on the military to intervene.

A nine hour assault on Comuna 13 began at dawn one day in May 2002. Black Hawk helicopter gunships hovered over the densely packed barrios as soldiers fought Comandos in the steep, narrow alleys and passages between the houses. This first inconclusive battle left 15 dead, including nine civilians, and led to further overt collaboration between the paramilitaries and the Colombian military after the hard right president Álvaro Uribe Vélez was sworn in for his first term that August.

One thousand soldiers, Black Hawk helicopters and armoured personnel carriers stormed the same Medellín barrios in October 2002 to begin a military occupation that lasted until December and resulted in almost 20 deaths. As the soldiers cleared the streets, the paramilitaries entered the barrios - within a year there were reports that at least 46 people had been ‘disappeared.’

The paramilitaries were primarily organised in the Bloque Cacique Nutibara, whose commander was Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano - ‘Don Berna’ - who had been a narco boss in the Medellín criminal cartel ‘La Terraza.’ In addition to fighting leftist Comandos, Berna’s paramilitaries fought other far right militias and threatened to kill criminal gang members if they didn’t join his force.

Through assassinations, threats and forced displacements, the Bloque Cacique Nutibara consolidated its control over Medellín’s barrios, profiting from the illegal drug and gun trades. State paramilitarisation - collusion between the far right death squads and Colombian politicians and military commanders - culminated in the attacks on Comuna 13 that defeated the Comandos and allowed the paramilitaries free reign across the entire city.

Barrio de Las Independencias

Paramilitaries legalised and legitimized

After Álvaro Uribe’s election as president, and the subsequent negotiations that accorded paramilitaries virtual impunity for their crimes, the Bloque Cacique Nutibara laid down their arms in front of the television cameras in November 2003. As barrio residents testify however, the paramilitaries remained in control in the Comunas and even sought to legitimise this control by attacking barrio and political organisers and taking over democratic organisations such as the Juntas de Acción Comunal.

‘The demobilisation of the paramilitaries was, in reality, a fictitious demobilisation. Those who appeared in uniforms and with guns in the newspapers were, in reality, criminals from the barrio who were not part of any organisation. Control was never relinquished over the barrios… and today they don’t patrol in uniforms, but the apparent calm in Medellín is because the paramilitaries have won.’
Ramírez, Barrio de 20 de julio

‘Our elected representatives on the Junta de Acción Comunal were told to collaborate or leave their positions… the paras had their own candidates who took over after our representatives left the junta and also the barrio.’
Rocio, Comuna 13
Peasant workers who had been forcibly displaced as a paramilitary war tactic on the Caribbean coast, and who had settled in Medellín’s Comuna 1, were attacked again as they tried to organise the Movimiento Social de Desplazados de Antioquia, (Social Movement of Displaced People of Antioquia), and earlier this year an activist in the community organisation Madres de la Candelaría, Judith Vergara Correa, was assassinated in Comuna 13.

‘Often our workers received threats, but Judith had four children and worked in the barrio… she was the Polo Democrático’s candidate to the barrio Junta in Comuna 13. Two men stopped the buseta she was on… they boarded it and without saying anything they shot her and killed her.’
Luis Fernando Quijano, worker in Barrio de El Pesebre
Two months later on 23 June, another local leader organising barrio workers in the leftist Polo Democrático coalition, Julio César Gómez Cano, was also shot dead, this time at his own home in Barrio Tricentenario in front of his two children. Later, threats to leave Medellín or be killed were attached to rocks smashed through windows at the coalition’s offices in the city centre.

Residents in the Santo Domingo Savio barrio in Comuna 1 in Medellín’s northeast also relate that killings continue despite the paramilitaries having supposedly ‘demobilised’. Threatening leaflets against community leaders and barrio organisers continue to be pasted to light posts as before, but political assassinations are now more often carried out with knives rather than assault weapons to make the attacks appear like common crimes.

Fear

The narrow passages and steep streets in the barrios are deserted after dark. Despite residents attempting to organise in the Polo Democrático Alternativo political coalition, the Madres de la Candelaría community association, or the Movimiento Social de Desplazados de Antioquia and other barrio organisations, the resurgent paramilitaries, legitimised and legalised under President Uribe’s protection, continue to control Medellín’s comunas through fear, forced conscription and threats.

Rodrigo was 15 when the paramilitaries took him. He was ‘conscripted’ but he came back in December 2005 after the paramilitaries demobilised. He came back changed… he wasn’t a happy child as before. Soon after, he began to receive calls – they shouted at him and insulted him. I asked him what was going on but at first he didn’t want to tell me. Then he said that he was being ordered to go back as just the paramilitary commanders were demobilising but the others had to return. Once, I received a call and the man said that Rodrigo knew he should return because he didn’t have much time left. Rodrigo told me he didn’t want to go back to that life, so I gave him some money and told him to stay with a friend in Pereira. After he left, a man came to my home and threatened to kill my other son if Rodrigo didn’t return to Medellín, so he came back. He came back after midnight and went with the man who had threatened to kill his brother. After a few days Rodrigo came home and started to collect his things together… he wanted to leave and told me that I should leave the barrio too. He tried to leave, but they killed him on 17 October, 2006.
Doña Orozco, Barrio de El Salado
In the barrio Altos de la Torre, so high that Medellín’s lights appear below as though from an aircraft, the paramilitaries control the night. Peasant workers displaced from Chocó on the Pacific coast, or Urabá on the Caribbean, attempt to begin again in the wood and tin shacks crammed against each other in what one resident called ‘the city’s lost barrio.’

‘It is dark here at night… it is isolated and no-one wants to come here… not many people know how to get here through the alleys and passages below, but the men dressed in black come at night and fire shots to make sure everyone stays inside. It is fear that stops us from even showing ourselves at the window…’
María, Barrio de los Altos de la Torre

This fear has created ghost barrios in Medellín that the paramilitaries have returned to control. But although these far right terrorists now have virtual legal impunity, shared political affinities with the president, and the assurance that, in the last resort, they can rely on the military’s Black Hawk helicopters to terrorize the comunas, some residents are determined to resist.

‘To the criminals who want to take our lives… you have no right to be in our barrio. On one side you want to be politicians, but you have a stone to throw that is hidden in your hand. But the paramilitaries can’t kill us all… with all our heart we will make justice in our own land.’
Astrid, Comuna 13

Bogotá, 15 de agosto de 2007

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Sources

The principal barrios in Comuna 1 (Popular) in Medellín’s northeast are Santo Domingo Savio, San Pablo and La Esperanza. The principal barrios in western central Comuna 13 (San Javier) are El Pesebre, 20 de julio, Las Independencias and El Salado. Altos de la Torre is in eastern central Medellín.
Asesinado dirigente del Polo Democrático en Antioquia, report on Polo Democrático Alternativo internet site, Colombia, 25 de junio de 2007
AUCtioquia, Jambi report on Centro de Medios Independientes de Colombia, 17 de abril de 2007
Doña Orozco account as told to Hugo García Segura, El Espectador, Bogotá, 22 de julio de 2007 names have been changed in all accounts - translations: paul.jisv
Los paramilitares en Medellín: ¿desmovilización o legalización? Editorial Amnistía International report, Madrid, 1 de septiembre de 2005
Asesinada lideresa del Polo en la Comuna 13, report on Centro de Medios Independientes de Colombia internet site, 23 de abril de 2007
Las noches de Medellín se tiñen de miedo, Mauricio Builes, Semana, Bogotá, 20 de noviembre de 2006
Que no quede impune, report on Polo Democrático Alternativo internet site, Colombia, 25 de abril de 2007

Ciudad de México

2007-08-08T02:06:00.000-05:00

La esquina de Isabel la Católica/República de Salvador

Plaza de Bolívar, Bogotá

2007-08-06T06:08:00.000-05:00

Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Colombia demonstration at Congress

Moncayo

2007-08-05T04:58:00.000-05:00

The President and the Schoolteacher

In an unprecedented public debate in Bogotá’s central Plaza de Bolívar, Colombia’s President Álvaro Uribe was challenged by a schoolteacher who had walked more than 1,200 kilometers across the country to draw attention to the fate of his soldier son, kidnapped by guerrillas for almost ten years.

Professor Gustavo Moncayo, whose son, Pablo Emilio, has been held as a ‘prisoner’ by the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) since December 1997, pleaded with the president to agree to a humanitarian exchange of guerrilla prisoners in jail with those held by the Farc.

President Uribe, flanked by military officers and his foreign minister, Fernando Araújo - a former Farc hostage who escaped from the guerrillas earlier this year - rejected any exchange during an unrestrained and often intemperate debate on the steps of Colombia’s Congress.

Over the jeers and whistles of thousands of Colombians who had come to greet Professor Moncayo at the end of his 46 day trek across the Equator near Ecuador’s frontier and the country’s mountains to the capital high in the Andes, the president refused to ‘give even one millimeter’ (‘no despejará un milímetro’) in the form of negotiations or concessions to what he called ‘criminals.’

The President demanded that the Farc free, without preconditions, all of the estimated 2,000 hostages that País Libre, an organization that works with kidnapped victims’ families, has estimated it is holding. Then, and only then, he said, would the government listen to the Farc’s demands for social justice.

Political analysts in Colombia consider this to be an ‘unrealistic’ proposal, particularly as the guerrillas believe that negotiations over the hostages are their only chance to have their demands considered. The Bogotá newspaper El Espectador commented that while the Farc were responsible for creating this ‘calamitous situation’, the president’s proposal to resolve it was thoughtless, and was merely an attempt to relieve the pressure Uribe is under to talk to the guerrillas.

The president has pursued hardline authoritarian militarization policies since he was first elected in 2002. After his re-election last year, he vowed to continue with a strategy of military confrontation, as well as relying on a policy of ‘military rescue’ of hostages in guerrilla hands - a policy criticized by the families of those hostages, many of whom accompanied Moncayo at different moments on his journey to Bogotá.

‘The families of the kidnapped victims are in the middle of a political game between the Farc and the government,’ (‘las familias de los secuestrados están en medio del juego politiquero de las Farc y del gobierno’) Moncayo said in response to the president’s rejection of a humanitarian exchange, and he implored Uribe not to make unrealistic proposals ‘just to have something to say. Don’t let our loved ones die in the jungles - they deserve to live!’ (‘No lanzar propuestas por lanzar propuestas. No deje morir a nuestros ceres queridos en la selva - ¡ellos merecen vivir!’)

‘Don’t compare the government of a democracy to these terrorists,’ (‘No compare al gobierno de la democracía con los terroristas,’) President Uribe retorted, and referring to a Farc member recently freed from jail, contemptuously suggested that Professor Moncayo, ‘go to Cuba and talk with the guerrilla Rodrigo Granda to find a solution.’ (‘vaya a Cuba a hablar con el guerrillero Rodrigo Granda para buscar una solución.’)

The debate between the president and the schoolteacher, broadcast live to the entire nation for two hours, ended with Professor Moncayo, disconsolate at the president’s intransigence, and still wearing metal chains to symbolize his son’s continuing captivity - walking down the Capitol’s steps in tears.

Meanwhile, President Uribe, in an extraordinary display of intemperance, angrily responded to shouts from the crowd to deny that he was connected to far right paramilitaries and narco-traffickers, saying, ‘I am not a front man for anyone… I don’t have one dollar in a foreign bank.’ (‘Yo no soy una fachada para nadie… no tengo ningún dolar en un banco en el exterior.’)

Even usually complaisant editorialists in Colombia’s limited press thought this performance ‘beneath the dignity of the presidency,’ and for independent writers such as Alfredo Molano, it was more evidence that the president’s arrogance is an obstacle to achieving an end to the conflict.

The paramilitaries, who had claimed to be patriots fighting the guerillas, are now known to have killed almost 15,000 Colombians - including trade union organizers, indigenous activists and peasant workers - since rightist politicians and the drug cartels organized them in the late Eighties.

Álvaro Uribe’s administration has awarded these paramilitaries, in return for giving up their arms, virtual impunity for the massacres, assassinations and forced displacements they have committed. Almost 50 members of Congress, all but one supporters of the president, have either been jailed or are under investigation for their connections to these far right death squads, and evidence about Uribe’s personal involvement is circling ever closer with each new revelation.

Between the stubborn intransigence of President Uribe, and the undoubted criminal and inhumane actions of the Farc in continuing to take and hold hostage peasant workers and those conscripted into the police or military through poverty, Professor Moncayo has now become the centre of a storm of debate in Colombia about how to achieve peace.

The schoolteacher’s tireless efforts over the last ten years to try to free his son have included meeting with guerrilla leaders in the mountains and with three Colombian presidents - all to no avail. Following his public debate with Uribe, the professor is now appealing directly to the Colombian people, and with the consent of Bogotá’s leftist mayor, Luis Garzón, Moncayo has vowed to remain in the capital’s central plaza until his son is free.

Bogotá, 5 de agosto de 2007

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Sources

La indignidad presidencial, Felipe Zuleta, El Espectador, Bogotá, 5 de agosto de 2007
Caminante por la paz de Colombia dice que sólo aceptará conversar con Álvaro Uribe, report on Telesur, Caracas, 1 de agosto de 2007
Debate a la plaza, Alfredo Molano, El Espectador, Bogotá, 5 de agosto de 2007
Multitudinario recibimiento al Profesor Moncayo a su llegada a la Plaza de Bolívar en Bogotá, article in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 1 de agosto de 2007
La plaza de Moncayo, Luis Noé Ochoa, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 2 de agosto de 2007
El show de la plaza, Antonio Caballero, Semana, Bogotá, agosto de 2007
Uribe: primero la liberación y luego zona de encuentro, report in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 3 de agosto de 2007
Un llanto explicable, Ramiro Bejarano Guzmán, El Espectador, Bogotá, 5 de agosto de 2007
Moncayo, Uribe y la plaza, editorial in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 4 de agosto de 2007
Discrepancias marcaron cita Moncayo-Uribe, report on Centro Independiente de Colombia internet site, agosto de 2007
El profesor Moncayo, editorial in El Espectador, Bogotá, 5 de agosto de 2007
Estadísticas del secuestro, Fundación País Libre report, Colombia, enero de 2007

Cuba

2007-07-31T20:00:00.000-05:00

La Habana, Cuba. Photograph: Walker Evans 1933

Puebla de los Ángeles, México

2007-07-30T05:09:00.000-05:00

La iglesia de La Soledad

José Saramago

2007-07-20T13:15:00.000-05:00

Más comunista que nunca

At almost 85, still a Communist?
I continue to be a Communist… more than ever.
…Ideas are not lost in the passage of time.

Despite political deceptions, your convictions have remained sure.One has convictions and lives with them. If you abandon them, what’s left? Nothing. Although things are not as pure as I imagined, I continue being what I am. One could be defeated, but one continues.

Communism exists in the 21st Century?
Communism doesn’t exist today and didn’t before. Communism has never existed in any country. The left in Portugal, France, Spain, Italy… lacks ideas. The unions are a disaster and left political parties are divided.

If Communism has never existed, what is your philosophy - Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky?
The philosophy is Marxism.
Why do I say Communism has never existed? In the Soviet Union it was state capitalism and not Communism. If there is no effective participation by the people in the life of the country, there is no Communism, and the Soviets didn’t have it. Citizens were called when the state needed their votes and nothing more. Limitations on liberty were serious - they couldn’t travel, they couldn’t leave, couldn’t talk or protest.

You think that Communism is a utopia?No. It is not a utopia.
Communism is a possibility.

That has never existed…
That has not existed up to now.

If Communism has never existed, then Communist leaders have been liars or demagogues?
No. That insults the memory of countless militants and activists all over the world - Communist activists who gave their lives for a cause they believed in, were committed to, and died for.

If Communism hasn’t existed, why are you a Communist?
To be Communist is a spiritual state… a state of mind.

Castro is a Communist?
I believe so. If there is anything that marks Castro, it is the spiritual state of which he speaks. It needs much spiritual force and conviction to resist the United States as Cuba has done.

What has Communism done for Cuba?
I wouldn’t say that Communism has arrived in Cuba, although it has progressed a lot towards it. We don’t know how Communism will manifest itself in practice, and can’t say exactly when it is achieved, but in Cuba there is a very clear vision of what it could be, and much has been achieved, but still not everything.

So Communism does exist?Cuba in this moment is the country closest to achieving Communism, but I don’t think it has arrived.

The guerrilla in Colombia are Communist?
Never have been!
And I think they never will be. The guerrilla are bandits - narco gangs fighting against their country. It is incredible that because of the guerrilla two generations in Colombia have been lost. Their existence has only produced death and disappearances and four thousand victims have been kidnapped. Even to talk just of kidnapping, the actions of the Farc are to be condemned. No political insurgency has resorted to kidnapping, and even less, has kept innocent people prisoner for years and years. This is not a fight for ideals, and the worst is, the Farc no longer know any other way of ‘fighting’. In other places, the guerrilla were political and were involved in the daily struggle, but in Colombia, no.

The solution to the conflict is war or dialogue?
The conflict doesn’t have a military solution.
Colombian civil society cannot be spectators to the disaster, the calamity and the horror that is taking place in the heart of their country. Civil society has to show its repulsion and its indignation, such as in demonstrations in favour of a humanitarian accord. I hope this agreement can be made and that it prospers… should just one, or two or three lives be saved it will be worth it.

But dialogue has failed…
But this doesn’t mean a second attempt, a third attempt, a tenth attempt won’t work. To think that all will be resolved at the first attempt is a little naïve. The government needs to look for new ways to open a dialogue, and the guerrilla needs to have a commitment to peace.

Do you think they have?
If they do they haven’t shown it.

What do you think about President Uribe’s policies to confront the guerrilla?
There’s little difference between Uribe and previous presidents.

What do you think about President Chávez?
Colombia believes he is a problem, no? Chávez is not a problem, he is a man loved by his people who believes it is possible to take millions of Venezuelans out of misery and poverty. Leftist governments are good for Latin America.

How do you see Colombia’s future?
Colombia has all the cultural, economic and social conditions to become a great country. But it has the cancer of the guerrilla and a society that has become used to them. Maybe, at the time the guerrilla first appeared, they had a reason - maybe to liberate Colombia from a virtually feudal state and the power of millionaire caciques. But they have perverted themselves to become an army of bandits, drug traffickers and kidnappers. However one looks at it, what they have become is unspeakable. I suffer for Colombia - its people are searching with seriousness, with much conviction. It is a country that believes culture is essential, that culture is not merely an ornament like a pearl necklace. If it can succeed in liberating itself from the horror of the guerrilla, Colombia has all it needs to be a great nation.

So there is hope?Hope makes life bearable.
Colombia could be - has been - a paradise. But today there are the disappeared, the prisoners, paramilitaries, guerrillas. Something monstrous has become commonplace in a Colombia that has lost a measure of reality. But Colombians have a chance to change this situation. The first step is to defeat Colombians’ apparent apathy. Colombia has lived 50 years of tragedy. This tragedy doesn’t touch some Colombians and it should touch them. The day that this land begins to give up its dead, maybe it could change - the land has to give up its dead so that the living can’t say that nothing is happening.

___________________________________

José de Sousa Saramago was born in Portugal in 1922 and joined the Partido Comunista Português while it was still illegal under António de Oliveira Salazar and Marcelo Caetano’s consecutive dictatorships. Saramago has now been in the PCP for 38 years. His work includes The Year Of The Death Of Ricardo Reis (1986), The Stone Raft (1986), History Of The Siege Of Lisbon (1989), The Gospel According To Jesus Christ (1991), Blindness (1995), All The Names (1997) and Seeing (2006). After the Portuguese government censored The Gospel According To Jesus Christ in 1991, Saramago left Portugal to live in Spain. He was awarded the Nobel Literature Prize in 1998.

José de Sousa Saramago interview in Cartagena de las Indias, Yamid Amat, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 15 de julio de 2007 translation: paul.jisv
‘El problema de Colombia no tiene solución militar,’ afirmó premio Nobel José Saramago, Aporrea.org report on Telesur, Caracas, 10 de julio de 2007
Saramago, el Polo y la izquierda, Álvaro Camacho Guizado, El Espectador, Bogotá, 20 de julio de 2007
President Uribe tiene tres mil motivos para no dormir, José Saramago, El Periódico de Cataluña, Barcelona, 3 de mayo de 2004
‘Colombia debe vomitar sus muertos,’ dice el escritor portugués José Saramago, María Paulina Ortiz interview, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 9 de julio de 2007 translation: paul.jisv

La Pobreza

2007-07-09T19:38:00.000-05:00

'Here we wait to see what God wants.'

Quibdó, Chocó.

For Alicia and José César Perea, just getting by is a privilege. After being forcibly displaced from their land on the Pacific coast by resurgent far right paramilitaries, they have tried to settle in El Obrero (‘The Worker’) barrio in Chocó’s state capital, Quibdó.

Here, where Colombian soldiers patrol the dirt streets at dusk, they have tried to make a new life, starting again with almost nothing but with little hope of ever returning home because the paramilitaries who took their land handed it over to businessmen to clear for an African palm plantation.

In Quibdó, their wood and mudbrick home barely keeps out the rains, which are incessant in this tropical coastal state. Alicia rises at 4am in the morning to walk to the local market where she prepares fresh caught pargo fish and lobster for 15,000 pesos (US$7) for a 50 hour week.

Her husband, José César, hasn’t worked since he was hurt on a construction site last year. He cannot afford privatised medical care and hasn’t even been able to buy painkillers. Despite this, José César still searches for casual day labour, or el rebusque, but in Quibdó he says, ‘there is little work at all, and much hunger.’

Usually, he spends the rest of his day waiting for Alicia. Of their six children, four have died, one is in prison, and they think the other is in Medellín, but they are not sure. They try to look after their four grandchildren as best they can, and most days they manage to get by making and sharing caldo - a thin watery soup with a little potato.

There is no running water in their home, except what is collected from the rains, but sometimes José César manages to bring home a guanabana - a large juicy spiky fruit - or maybe a mango that he has knocked out of a tree by throwing stones at it.

There is electricity, via a precarious wire that pirates the power from overhead lines, but it is unreliable - usually, without light and once night falls, the Pereas have little else to do but go to bed and wait for the dawn.

Cazucá and Ciudad Bolívar, Bogotá.

‘I know I am malnourished because they told me so at school,’ says Ángela, an 8 year old displaced girl in Bogotá, leaning against a Coca Cola advertising hoarding that is also the wall to someone’s home, ‘This is because since I was very little I have eaten dirt. Now it’s better in the city - I can eat the scraps that are thrown out behind the stores.’

Ángela runs to take shelter as a fierce torrential rainstorm, an aguacero, begins to convert the steep dirt streets in Cazucá and Ciudad Bolívar into thick mud streams. The brick walls of the homes in these Bogotá barrios have no mortar, and the roofs, a collection of scrap metal zinc sheets and wooden planks, drip water onto hard earth floors.

The displaced and dispossessed that manage to make it to Colombia’s capital attempt to settle here, scattered amongst makeshift homes in the close, narrow streets that cover what the barrio residents call ‘the mountain.’ There is water and electricity in the homes further down, but the newest arrivals have to begin in the highest streets in the barrio, where there is little.

Water is collected from a communal tap that trickles out a flow for barely two hours a day. Ángela sometimes has to miss school to wait in line in the hope that her wait will coincide with those two hours, but it is better than missing school to ask for coins at stoplights.

Hernández, Ángela’s father, works as a baker in a panadería, and sometimes she can sell little hot bread pan de yuca rolls her father gives her to the workers on the colectivo buses. Although he is paid much less than the legal minimum wage - 436,000 pesos, or about US$220 a month - and has to work every day in the week, Hernández believes he is fortunate to have work at all.

‘No-one wants to hire a desterrado,’ he says, ‘I had to lie to get work - bosses don’t want those who live in Cazucá or Ciudad Bolívar - for the displaced there are no opportunities, you are nothing, no-one wants you.’

Forced to leave their home in Córdoba, a Caribbean coastal state, Hernández and Ángela had to wait two months after arriving in Bogotá before receiving a little state assistance. A 500,000 pesos grant (US$250) over six months then allowed Ángela to start school, but there is still no help to return home, even though fear and violence seem to have followed them to this barrio.

The rightist paramilitaries that Colombian President Álvaro Uribe claimed had ‘demobilised’ and turned in their guns, have been reprised as criminal gangs in Cazucá and Ciudad Bolívar. One illegal armed force, the Águilas Negras, or Black Eagles, undeterred by the police cars that here are armoured personnel carriers, terrorise the barrios with threats, assassinations and forced conscription.

At night, from the steep, dark streets on ‘the mountain’, the distant lights of the glittering steel and glass towers in downtown Bogotá look like more of the starlit sky, and to Hernández, are just as inaccessible. He doesn’t understand why, if he and his daughter work so hard, the future still seems to be as dark as the skies that bring the torrential aguaceros.

Poverty

28 million Colombians live in poverty, according to research in the independent Revista Actualidad Colombiana. Even the government concedes that almost 50 per cent of all its citizens are condemned to live on less than 7,500 pesos (US$3.75) a day, with almost 15 per cent, or more than 6 million people, enduring misería - extreme poverty - and attempting to survive on less than 3,000 pesos (US$1.50) a day.

In the capital, together with Hernández and Ángela, 2.5 million live in poverty, while in Chocó on the Pacific coast, Alicia and José César Perea and their grandchildren are among the 85 per cent who are considered to be in this state.

Unable to afford basic foods containing iron, vitamin A or zinc, at least 80 people, 50 of them children, have died of malnutrition so far in 2007 in Chocó alone, and in all Colombia it is expected that 1000 children under 5 years of age will die this year from nutritional deficiencies and associated illnesses.

Colombia’s riches - its gold, oil, emeralds, sugar, coffee and exotic fruits - have the potential to end the disgrace that allows a million people in this unbelievably beautiful country to go hungry each day. But averting their eyes from the pain of someone’s loss helping their gain, Colombia’s uninterested political elite continues to permit the forced displacement, and the unmitigating terror and impunity that enforces this dispossession, to further enrich those who already have more than Ángela or the Pereas ever will.

Bogotá, 9 de julio de 2007

______________________________________

Sources

Muertos de hambre en el paraíso, Cristian Valencia, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 10 de junio de 2007
Desterrados, Mabel González Bustelo, Centro de Investigación para la Paz report, Madrid, 2005
Pobre país, report in Semana, Bogotá, 16 de octubre de 2006
El debate de la medición de la pobreza, Ángel Herreño Hernández, Actualidad Colombiana, Colombia, 3 de julio de 2007
Chocó: la crisis, Polo Democrático Alternativo, Quibdó statement on Centro de Medios Independiente de Colombia site, 18 de abril de 2007
El pan nuestro de cada día, Rosario del Castillo and María Cristina Alvarado, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 23 de junio de 2007
…Ni qué niño muerto, Alfredo Molano, El Espectador, Bogotá, 31 de marzo de 2007
Cocaine wars, photographer: Scott Dalton, New York Times, United States, 22 May 2007
Pueblo pobre, pueblo rico, Néstor Alonso López and Catalina Oquendo, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 15 de abril de 2007
Propaganda y falacias oficiales, Sarmiento Anzola, Desde Abajo, Bogotá, 19 de febrero de 2006
Situación más critica de hambre y desnutrición en Colombia, Sara Del Castillo, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 1 de abril de 2007
La mission contra la pobreza, Red de Protección Social contra la Pobreza Extrema report, Colombia, octubre de 2006
Voices of the poor in Colombia, Jairo A Arboleda, et al., IBRD report, United States, 2004
Al Chocó lo esta matando la rosca, Néstor López, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 1 de abril de 2007
Conflicto en Ciudad Bolívar, article in El Espectador, Bogotá, 10 de junio de 2007
Condena por desaparición forzada y asesinatos en Ciudad Bolívar, article on Centro de Medios Independiente de Colombia site, 6 de junio de 2006
Cuando la guerra toma forma de hambre y pandillas, Humberto Márquez, IPS report on Centro de Medios Independiente de Colombia site, 19 de junio de 2006
Paramilitares se reciclan al sur de Bogotá, Diana Cariboni, IPS report on Centro de Medios Independientes de Colombia, 23 de junio de 2006
Crisis humanitaria en Ciudad Bolívar, Camilo Raigozo, Voz, Bogotá, 27 de junio de 2007

Presidente, desmovilícese!

2007-07-06T18:01:00.000-05:00

'Uncomfortable coincidences'
The latest evidence that ties Colombia's president to the paramilitaries

The president and the 'Comandante'

Colombia’s compliant editorialists refer to the revelations as ‘incómodas coincidencias’ - ‘uncomfortable coincidences.’ President Álvaro Uribe claims the accusations are ‘insinuaciones malévolas’ - ‘malevolent insinuations’ - and has, as usual, attacked the messenger, criticising American newspapers, Colombian opposition politicians and even México in an attempt to divert attention from the latest evidence that ties him to the paramilitaries.

The first is a video that shows Álvaro Uribe at a private meeting on 31st October 2001 to organise support for his 2002 presidential campaign. According to the Colombian political magazine Semana, five of the 13 people present were associated with the paramilitaries in the far right AUC militia, and one of them, Frenio Sánchez Carreño, was a notorious narco boss whose militia name was ‘Comandante Esteban.’

Comandante Esteban had been complicit in at least 80 assassinations and also the forced displacement of more than 3000 peasant workers, according to Colombia’s DAS intelligence service, whose agents were actively searching for him at this time. He had threatened local journalists as far back as December 2000, and just twelve days before meeting with Álvaro Uribe, he had signed an AUC ‘communiqué’ that declared union and worker organisers to be ‘military targets.’

The meeting pledged to support Uribe’s presidential campaign, and also other rightist candidates in the 2002 Senate and Congress elections, in the hope that legislation promoted by these politicians would ‘legitimise’ the paramilitaries. These militias succeeded in electing their candidates in 2002 - AUC national boss Salvatore Mancuso has since admitted that intimidation and bought votes, or threats and assassinations, allowed many rightist candidates to be ‘elected’ unopposed - and soon received a payback from the politicians in the form of virtual impunity for their crimes.

The DAS arrested Álvaro Uribe’s supporter, Comandante Esteban, just six weeks after the 31st October meeting, and charged him with aggravated homicide and attempted homicide, among other crimes. For ‘reasons that are still not clear’, according to Semana, and after Uribe became president, he was freed from jail in 2005. Now, as Frenio Sánchez Carreño, the authorities have offered a $5,000 reward for his arrest, accusing him of leading supposedly ‘demobilised’ paramilitaries reprised as criminal gangs.

An interview in México revealed more details about the president’s ties to the paramilitaries. Fabio Ochoa Vasco is a narcotics cartel boss who is one of the United States’ most wanted criminals - he has a $5 million price on his head - and he claimed to Colombian journalists that the paramilitaries’ boss of bosses, Salvatore Mancuso, had financed Álvaro Uribe’s presidential campaign in 2002.

It is suspected that Mancuso, in jail and expecting a lenient sentence while avoiding extradition to the US, has not revealed all about the paramilitaries’ ties to Colombia’s political elite for this reason. Ochoa, lacking Mancuso’s political protection to avoid his fate, has decided to detail his part in the parapolítica scandal in an attempt to be worth more to Colombian investigators and avoid an American jail.

Ochoa claimed that he took thousands of dollars in cash - paramilitaries’ narcotics profits - in suitcases to the capital, Bogotá, to finance rightist candidates in the 2002 elections. He claimed that the paramilitaries and Mancuso contributed $2 million to the president’s campaign, and that he also organised campaigns to intimidate voters in Medellín to ensure Álvaro Uribe was elected.

Mancuso said ‘that the paramilitaries should finance the (presidential) campaign because one of the promises is that there will be a law that should anyone be accused or suspected of being in the paramilitaries, they will be saved,’ Ochoa related, ‘so we made sure that all the votes had to be for Uribe.’ In Medellín’s barrios, people confirmed that the paramilitaries patrolled the streets that election day, demanding to see residents’ cedulas, (identification cards), and warning opposition supporters ‘not to show at the polls if you’re not going to vote for Uribe,’ as one barrio activist recalled.

The third revelation came in another video, this time posted on the opposition Polo Democrático Alternativo internet site that showed another paramilitary boss, ‘Ernesto Báez’, acclaiming Uribista politicians in the 2002 elections as ‘his candidates.’ The Colombia Democrática and Convergencia Popular Cívica parties that the paramilitaries supported succeeded in electing Senators and representatives to Congress in 2002, who subsequently went on to approve laws that gave the paramilitaries their virtual impunity.

The Colombia Democrática party was established by Álvaro Uribe’s first cousin, Mario Uribe, and one of the Congress reps that paramilitary boss ‘Ernesto Báez’ supported was the CD’s Rocío Arias. After the connections between the far right militias and the president’s Congressional supporters became known, Arias revealingly said, ‘No-one can blame us if the paras, for ideological reasons, supported us.’

The president responded to all the revelations with characteristic disdain, at first refusing to ‘make comments or give explanations about each photograph or video recorded’ during his political career. As the accusations mounted, he even resorted to criticising the Méxican police for not arresting Fabio Ochoa Vasco, rather than counter the narco boss’s allegations.

In the end the president was forced to make a US President Richard Nixon ‘I am not a crook’ style live television broadcast to all Colombia, claiming ‘I have never abused my position… I never sought to be president using illicit money, and I have never used illicit money to remain as the Republic’s president.’

Editorials and newspaper columnists, rather than investigate further, predictably echoed the president’s line, claiming the most recent revelations were ‘a disgrace’, not because of the details, but because they were published at all. ‘Against Colombia,’ declared the country’s single national newspaper, El Tiempo, commenting on the allegations, and taking up the elite’s favourite tactic of deliberately equating the president with the country in order to curtail debate, continued, ‘the campaign against Colombia is implacable, devastating and unjust.’

‘Implacable, devastating and unjust’ are adjectives that could more appropriately be applied to the terror the narco paramilitaries have inflicted on Colombia in recent times, but ‘a disgrace’ is too complaisant a term to describe a president supported, financed and bought by such terrorists.

Bogotá, 6 de julio de 2007

_____________________________________

Sources

La prueba reina, report on Polo Democrático Alternativo internet site, Colombia, 21 de junio de 2007
Uribe dice que ataques a su campaña golpean al país, headline report in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 20 de junio de 2007
Paramilitary ties to elite in Colombia are detailed, Juan Forero, Washington Post, United States, 22 May 2007
Hablar mal de Colombia, Óscar Collazos, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 31 de mayo de 2007
Comunicado de prensa, Presidencia de la República Colombia statement on Telesur, Caracas, 18 de junio de 2007
Piden a EEUU investigar infiltración de paras en campaña de Uribe, Gerardo Reyes, El Nuevo Herald, United States, 14 de junio de 2007
Firmeza y honor, Fernando Londoño Hoyos, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 5 de julio de 2007
Nexos, mentiras y videos, Daniel Coronell, Semana, Bogotá, 25 de junio de 2007
The best laid plans of presidents and war criminals, Garry Leech, Colombia Journal, United States, 17 May 2007
El hombre del cartel, reportaje in Semana, Bogotá, 18 de junio de 2007
Contra Colombia, Fernando Londoño Hoyos, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 21 de junio de 2007
‘Báez’ pidió votar por político que fue clave en el Senado, report in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 23 de junio de 2007
Uribe negó recibir ayuda de narcos y paramilitares en primera campaña presidencial, report on Telesur, Caracas, 18 de junio de 2007
Entre popularidad, credibilidad y eficacia, Claudia López, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 8 de mayo de 2007
El Nuevo Herald publicó video de Álvaro Uribe de 2001 en el que aparece jefe paramilitar, report in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 14 de junio de 2007
Yo acuso, report on Polo Democrático Alternativo internet site, Colombia, 19 de junio de 2007
Lucha a ‘codazos’ anuncia Álvaro Uribe para defender la dignidad presidencial, Edulfo Peña, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 23 de junio de 2007
Video links Colombia militia boss and Uribe, Frank Bajak, Washington Post, United States, 17 June 2007
Uribe: Nunca hubiera a buscado la presidencia con dineros ilícitos, report on Telesur, Caracas, 19 de junio de 2007

Océano Pacífico

2007-06-28T09:18:00.000-05:00

Club Colombia

2007-06-20T20:56:00.000-05:00

That military generals, admirals, presidents and senators share common interests as a privileged elite in a militarised nation such as Colombia is not news, but when newspaper editors and broadcasters are part of the same club, the media can be relied on to divert attention or fail to report on the scandals that threaten this elite’s privileges.

As the parapolítica death squad scandal circles ever closer to President Álvaro Uribe - the latest is a video showing him with a narco boss at an election campaign meeting in 2001, just before the boss, implicated in assassinating worker and union activists, was arrested - the president can be assured that investigative reports in the Colombian press will be few and far between.

Colombia has just one daily national newspaper, El Tiempo, but the latest revelations were not due to its investigative reports - on the contrary, after the evidence was printed first in US newspapers, El Tiempo merely summarised in a few lines what these reports said, and then published in its entirety a communiqué from the president that intemperately denied any connection to narco bosses or the paramilitaries.

It was left to the Washington Post to investigate further, while El Tiempo concentrated on criticising those who criticised the president as criticising Colombia. One of its columnists later tried to defend the paper’s political coverage claiming El Tiempo’s editorial line was ‘independent’, although ‘independent’ compared to what was not explained, probably because there is little editorial pluralism in Colombia to compare it to.

But then even this columnist had to admit that his personal connections to the newspaper’s owners meant he probably couldn’t be believed. The Santos clan that owns El Tiempo is part of Colombia’s closed political elite - its former editor, Francisco Santos, is now the vicepresident, and his cousin and former El Tiempo journalist, Manuel Santos, was first a Finance Minister and is now the Defence Minister in Uribe’s government.

Not surprisingly, El Tiempo’s editorials have strongly supported President Álvaro Uribe’s authoritarian militarisation policies - in 2005 the newspaper demanded that the Constitution be rewritten to allow the president a consecutive term, and in the 2006 election it even claimed that should the opposition leftist Polo Democrático coalition force the president into a second round, it would be ‘inconvenient for the country.’

Although the paper’s editor, Enrique Santos, had claimed his Uribista editorial line would have no effect on campaign reporting - ‘it’s not going to influence the balance at all,’ he said - El Tiempo declared on election day that the president must win in the first round, as anything else would be ‘awfully wearying’ for Colombia.

Fortunately for Colombia’s elite, their favoured candidate survived the indignity of submitting to democratic elections, although allegations that the paramilitaries bought votes, intimidated opposition supporters and assassinated anti-Uribista candidates, have since cast doubt on the election’s legitimacy.

But again, the president can be assured that the paucity of independent and investigative reporting in Colombia should mean that there are no more threatening consequences to his clientilist caudillismo politics than having some rightist Congress representatives and Senators thrown in jail.

The editors and broadcasters ‘who sign the paychecks think one way,’ commented independent political columnist Daniel Coronell after he received death threats and went into exile in the US, and this ‘definitely reduces a journalist’s spirit to report any story to the contrary.’ The peculiarly responsive nature of inquiry that characterises El Tiempo and Colombia’s pre-eminent political magazines Semana and Cambio seem to bear this out.
Investigative reports into the other Colombia - peasant workers and the indigenous forcibly displaced and counted in their millions, or the Colombians enduring an incredible 85 per cent poverty rate on the Pacific coast, are limited and inconsistent, while to divert attention, criticism is often directed at Venezuela’s President Chávez or at Colombia’s opposition Polo Democrático.

Parapolítica scandal revelations such as the Senators and Congressmen implicated in assassinating political opponents through their association with the paramilitaries, Ambassador or Foreign Minister resignations, or even narco bosses campaigning for the president’s election - stories that would be headline news day after day in the United States - receive relatively scant press coverage in Colombia.

Sometimes there is a real reason for this incurious detachment - the Committee to Protect Journalists has reported on the threats and intimidation that Colombian journalists are subject to when attempting to report on the paramilitaries’ connections to politicians, and even El Tiempo’s editor admits that this causes a ‘dictatorship of fear’ which ‘leads to self censorship’ and an ‘imposed silence.’

70 journalists have been killed in Colombia since the paramilitaries organised into a coherent national force in 1997, according to the International Press Institute. Although the picture is not all black and white - the guerrilla Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia have killed reporters too - the far right paramilitaries have been implicated in more threats and assassinations, and more insidiously, have been able to draw on their political connections to receive impunity for these crimes.

The ‘imposed silence’ has also received President Álvaro Uribe’s contribution. The Committee to Protect Journalists comments that the president’s favoured response to criticism is to accuse reporters of being terrorists or communists, encouraging either the paramilitaries to threaten or force writers into exile, or Colombia’s DAS intelligence service to arrest or deport foreign journalists.

The limited opposition press - the liberal El Espectador and communist Voz and the small leftist papers Desde Abajo and Revolución Obrera - have suffered terrorist attacks or had journalists assassinated and editors threatened, while local newspapers and radio stations are restricted in their independence through their owners’ corruption and political allegiances.

‘The owner calls the governor or mayor and says ‘Give me a million pesos and we’ll continue to work together’,’ a local radio reporter relates. ‘It’s impossible to fight with the boss,’ another local journalist reports, when the local newspaper is owned by a congressman or even the conservative Catholic Church.

Colombian TV presents a similar picture. The country’s two private broadcasters have an 80 per cent audience share and are controlled by the two richest men in Colombia’s elite club, Carlos Ardila Lulle and Julio Santo Domingo. Domingo recently said that Uribe was the greatest president Colombia had ever had, and encouraged the Uribista controlled Congress to change the Constitution again to allow the president a third term.

‘Thing’s have got worse,’ affirms investigative TV reporter Hellman Morris, ‘in Colombia there is just private TV - all reality programs and telenovelas and little news and debate with different perspectives.’ The president has closed the public financed Inravisión broadcaster that had featured cultural and independent programming as well as critical documentaries, and there are reports that even congressional and judicial debates are censored before being broadcast on cable TV stations.

A Senate debate that the Polo Democrático had initiated to discuss Uribista politicians’ connections to the paramilitaries in October 2006 was inexplicably taken off the air without any explanation, and as more parapolítica scandal details become known, forcing more rightist politicians before the courts, journalists are being denied access to the judicial hearings that investigate these revelations.

The restrictions, assassinations and threats - presidential and paramilitary - assist in protecting Colombia’s elite from critical and investigative reporting, and are then complimented by the peculiar editorial pluralism that restricts opinions to this elite - previous presidents and their relatives are prominent columnists in El Tiempo and Semana. All this serves to distort reality in Colombia to the point that a paramilitarized state is almost uncritically accepted.

As Polo Democrático Senator Gustavo Petro has pointed out, the Colombian press has misrepresented or failed to report on the paramilitaries’ atrocities, massacres and assassinations to such a degree that barely 6 per cent in Colombia believe these terrorists are a problem.

As more rightist politicians are arrested and the narco and parapolítica scandal edges closer to the president, the more Colombia’s elite may attempt to rely on this perception to avoid deeper scrutiny, investigation and jail. And as has been proven, while the newspaper editors’ class is the politicians’ class, there should be little need to pressure, censor or restrict the press to protect this elite. For the rich in Colombia - for Senators, presidents and editors, Colombia continues to be their exclusive club.

Bogotá, 20 de junio de 2007

__________________________________________

Sources

Oposição quer impor a ditadura da midia, Aram Aharonian, Folha da São Paulo, Brasil, 10 de junio de 2007
Colombia: mordaza a la libertad de expresión y las conexiones funestas del presidente, Olafo Montalbán, Aporrea.org, Caracas, 25 de agosto de 2005
Entre popularidad, credibilidad y eficacia, Claudia López, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 8 de mayo de 2007
Censorship, hegemony and the media in Colombia, James Brittain, Colombia Journal, United States, 27 November 2006
La pelea de los gobiernos por los medios de comunicación en América Latina, Karen Jiménez Zubiría et al, El Tiempo, 2 de junio de 2007
Reporters under fire in Colombia, Carlos Lauría, NACLA Report on the Americas, United States, No.37 issue 4, January 2004
RCTV: La paja en el ojo ajeno, Cecilia Ramón Arnáiz, Noticias Aliadas, Perú, 13 de junio de 2007
El poder de la prensa, Oscar Cuenta, Desde Abajo, Bogotá, 20 de marzo de 2007
‘Silenced by the gun’ Enrique Santos Calderon interview, BBC Americas, London, 3 May 2005
Paramilitares financian medios de comunicación en Colombia, dice senador Gustavo Petro, article in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 7 de junio de 2007
Colombia es el país americano con menor seguridad para la libertad de la prensa, Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias report on Aporrea.org, Caracas, 22 November 2006
Uribe calls press threats ‘crime against democracy’ News alert on Committee to Protect Journalists internet site, United States, 15 March 2006
Views of the other Colombia, Hollman Morris interview, ZNet, United States, 4 November 2006
Comunicación y participación política, Lucas Urdaneta, Actualidad Colombiana, Bogotá, 4 de junio de 2007
Profesión mortal en Colombia, Michael Easterbrook, Noticias Aliadas, Perú, 1 de julio de 2002
Los medios favorecieron que sectores tengan imagen positive del paramilitarismo, Gustavo Petro interview, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 7 de junio de 2007. Senator Petro also cited polls that gave the paramilitaries the outright support of 25 per cent of Colombians, while 51 per cent thought it was ‘logical’ for the military to work with far right terrorists. He suggested that paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso’s claims to have financed Colombian TV broadcasters might have contributed to creating a positive image for the paramilitaries.
Concentración e indiferencia, editorial in Desde Abajo, Bogotá, 20 de abril de 2005
Los amores del cazador y las bestias salvajes, Daniel Samper Pizano, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 20 de junio de 2007
Video links Colombia militia boss and Uribe, Frank Bajak, Washington Post, United States, 17 June 2007
Comentarios, editorial on Polo Democrático Alternativo internet site, Colombia, 8 de junio de 2007
Contested country, Eric Fichtl, Colombia Journal, United States, August 2005
IPI death watch reports, International Press Institute internet site at: freemedia.at /cms/ipi/deathwatch Austria, retrieved on 20 June 2007
El exceso de gestión, Daniel Coronell, Semana, Bogotá, 11 de junio de 2007
Historias no contadas/Untold Stories, Chip Mitchell, Dangerous Assignments, United States, 29 October 2005
Más allá de la reelección, El Tiempo editorial, Bogotá, 28 de mayo de 2006
Journalism in Colombia: ‘I silence my voice before it is silenced for me’ article in Frontline Latin America, London, September 2005
Prensa Colombiana denuncia censura a través de vías judiciales, Radio Nacional de Venezuela report on Aporrea.org, Caracas, 10 de febrero de 2007

Empire State

2007-06-09T02:48:00.000-05:00

New York City

Núñez or Reyes but never Lopez Pumarejo

2007-06-04T20:51:00.000-05:00

Colombia’s President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, elected in 2006 to a second term after the Supreme Court approved consecutive reelection for the first time since 1892, seems to be proving the historical lesson that reelected presidents never manage to conduct their final term with grace.

Implicated in the parapolítica scandal, Senators, Ambassadors and his Foreign Minister have resigned or been jailed, while strikes and demonstrations take over the streets in Bogotá and extreme poverty and inequality mean children die due to malnutrition in the slum barrios of the displaced and dispossessed on Colombia’s Pacific coast.

In the face of resurgent paramilitaries, reprised as criminal gangs, and evidence that indigenous and union organisers continue to be assassinated while journalists continue to be threatened, even Colombia’s financier, the United States, has faltered in the previous uncritical support it has given to Álvaro Uribe’s authoritarian policies.

The president’s response has been as intemperate and contemptuous as ever, leading even traditionalist politicians to criticise the caudillismo - corrupt, clientilist partisan politics - that have characterised his term in the Casa de Nariño presidential palace since 2002.

In this respect Álvaro Uribe has not been so different from some of the previous Colombian presidents to have served more than one term, such as Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, Rafael Núñez and Rafael Reyes. However, each of these reelected presidents have another characteristic in common - their failure to complete their final term.

Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera was first elected president in 1845 as a Conservative, and reelected in 1861 as a Liberal. In his final term his authoritarian and dismissive attitude toward the Colombian Republic’s democratic institutions led to a decree that ordered Congress closed. This attempt at an executive coup was met with a legislative counter coup however, and the dictatorial president was unceremoniously dismissed, arrested and exiled to Perú.

Rafael Núñez was elected in 1880 as a Liberal and reelected in 1882 as a Conservative - a testament to the closed, opportunistic politics often celebrated as democratic and bipartisan in Colombian academic histories. Núñez presided over a short civil war, and after being reelected for a third time in 1886, decreed centralised powers for the presidency and left Bogotá to rule Colombia from Cartagena on the Caribbean coast.

To show his complete contempt for Congress, President Núñez left civil war partisan supporters José Serrano and Eliseo Payán in charge in the capital, giving them orders by telegram. After the president began to repress press criticism, Congress lost patience and declared Foreign Minister Carlos Hoguín as president, but Núñez returned to win the 1892 elections and extend his presidential term to 6 years, and died soon after.

Rafael Reyes was elected as a Conservative president after the United States forced Panamá’s separation from Colombia in 1903. Obvious corruption, patronage and caudillismo characterised the Reyes presidency, and he resorted to repression to stifle criticism and imprisoned opposition supporters as he became ever more authoritarian.

Reyes repeated Cipriano de Mosquera’s attempt to dismiss Congress, and he tried to repeat Núñez’s attempt to extend his presidential term and avoid elections. Reyes succeeded in rewriting the Constitution to permit a 1905-1915 term, but increasing political polarisation resulted in an assassination attempt, and then massive demonstrations that impelled the president to resign for two days in March 1909, and then to resign definitively in July before secretly fleeing Colombia for Madrid.

These disastrous precedents to President Álvaro Uribe’s reelection have a reflection in the current parapolítica scandals, in the president’s messianic authoritarianism and in his caudillismo politics. A traditional Liberal first elected in 2002 as an independent, Uribe had the Constitution rewritten to permit a consecutive term, and was reelected in 2006 with the support of rightist paramilitary front parties and the traditional Conservatives.

However, Álvaro Uribe Vélez could not be more different from the last Colombian president to serve a second term, Alfonso López Pumarejo, or the first, Simón Bolívar. Bolívar was first appointed Colombian president in 1819 as Latin America was still fighting independence wars against the Spanish empire.

Reelected after the Spanish were defeated for the last time on the continent in Perú, Bolívar fought to unite the new Latin America republics. Faced with separatist and federalist opposition, he was forced in 1828 to assume dictatorial powers in an attempt to save the republic.

An assassination attempt against him in Bogotá, war in Venezuela and Perú and federalist opposition in Colombia disheartened Bolívar, and in 1830, as Latin America splintered into pieces, the Liberator accepted defeat and resigned as president.

The last president to be reelected in Colombia was Alfonso López Pumarejo in 1942. López Pumarejo had first been elected in 1934, and the progressive social policies directed towards the poor and Colombia’s workers in his first term to 1938 - La revolución en marcha - echoed United States’ President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

López Pumarejo’s 1942 reelection - the Constitution did not permit consecutive terms at that time, and López Pumarejo never sought to change it - came due to massive worker, union and even Communist support, and the president attempted to continue and deepen his Thirties revolución.

He introduced a minimum wage, legal work contracts and the nine hour workday, and legislated against child labour, enshrined workers’ right to strike in law and actively promoted union organising in an attempt to redress the inequalities in labour relations. The traditional Conservatives counter attacked with fierce, uncompromising opposition in Congress and the press, encouraging the military to attempt a coup to depose him.

Although the coup failed, relentless rightist opposition to López Pumarejo’s administration, together with the international wartime depression in the Forties, undercut the president’s ability to make further progressive advances. Accusations that the Communist Party dictated his policies stirred further coup threats, but an attempt at resignation was withdrawn after Colombian workers went on strike in his support.

Believing that a rightist military junta taking control in Bogotá was inevitable should he continue as president, López Pumarejo irrevocably resigned in July 1945. Frustrated by reaction, he lamented the right’s elitism in his final presidential address: ‘It alarms me that there appears to have been created a political class far removed from the vital interests of the Colombian worker, from his present preoccupations and his legitimate ambitions.’

Bolívar and López Pumarejo had been reelected as president, and had failed to serve out their final terms just as Presidents Cipriano de Mosquera, Núñez and Reyes had been reelected and also failed to complete their presidencies. But there the similarities end - Bolívar and López Pumarejo had resigned, their altruistic and far-sighted causes defeated by reaction and enmity, but Cipriano de Mosquera, Núñez and Reyes had been corrupt, dictatorial caudillos, and their failures were their own.

Álvaro Uribe Vélez still has some time to serve out his final presidential term, and could still avoid Cipriano de Mosquera, Núñez and Reyes’ fate, but his parapolítica caudillismo, authoritarianism and disinterested and heartless social policies ensure that whatever happens, this president could never be compared to Bolívar or López Pumarejo.

Bogotá, 4 de junio de 2007

_______________________________________

Sources

Alfonso López Pumarejo, Silvia Rojas Caballero, Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, diciembre de 2004
¿Se romperá la maldición? Report in Semana Elecciones 2006 Edición Especial, Bogotá, 29 de mayo de 2006
Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, Claudia Vásquez, Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, diciembre de 2004
El Presidente Del Quinquenio, Carlos José Reyes, Revista Credencial Historia, Bogotá, julio de 2004
Uribe II ¿un grave error? Daniel Samper Pizano, El Tiempo, Bogotá, junio de 2007
Bolívar, Gustavo Vargas Martinez, Biblioteca del Banco de la República, Bogotá, diciembre de 2004
Rafael Núñez - El Regenerador, Nicolás del Castillo Mathieu, Revista Credencial Historia, Bogotá, enero de 1991
Entre la legitimidad y la violencia, Marco Palacios, Duke, Londres, 2006
Dance of the millions, Vernon L. Fluharty, Pittsburgh Press, Los Estados Unidos, 1957
¿Uribe III? Report in Semana, Bogotá, 29 de enero de 2007
Rafael Núñez: Sus Ultimos Dias, Eduardo Posada Carbó, Revista Credencial Historia, Bogotá, septiembre de 1994
Un consejero de la nación, report in Semana, Bogotá, 21 de febrero de 1955
Rafael Reyes, S M Córdoba Giraldo, Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, diciembre de 2004
¿Liderazgo o caudillismo? Francisco Leal Buitrago, El Tiempo, Bogotá, junio de 2007
El cuartelazo, José Serrano, Revista Credencial Historia, Bogotá, enero de 2006
López Pumarejo: La Revolución en Marcha, Benjamin Ardila Duarte, Revista Credencial Historia, Bogotá, diciembre de 2005

Caribbean

2007-06-02T20:31:00.000-05:00

Venezuela

Poesía

2007-05-31T20:48:00.000-05:00

Whitman's poetry and prose between the wars

We are all docile dough faces.
They knead us with the fist,
They, the dashing southern lords,
We labor as they list!1
Walt Whitman’s writing between the Mexican – American war, 1846 – 1848, and the civil war in the United States, 1861 — 1865, is more than the 1855 Leaves Of Grass. As a newspaper writer, editor and political activist in the 1850s, Whitman witnessed and wrote about the political infighting, corruption, class conflict and disunited states that resulted in an America torn apart in civil war.

As a newspaperman in New York State, Whitman wrote articles commentating on the political war that consumed America from the moment that Mexican soldiers left the Pacific coast, to the inauguration of the racist Confederate States of America.2

'Our shame' was how he described America's presidents in the 1850s. Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan were guilty of graft, patronage, incompetence and divisive compromise over Black Americans forced to work as slaves in the southern states.

Whitman came to consider US society as 'an ocean covered with political 'scum', below which lay the pure, deep waters of common humanity.'3 At one and the same time, he lost confidence in the presidency and became disillusioned with Congress, but continued to believe in the Union and celebrate American nationalism and American workers. This dissonance in Whitman's politics and thought at once led him to despairing contempt and to a faith in 'sovereign' individuals coming together to heal the divided nation.

In ‘The Eighteenth Presidency’, an 1856 election campaign tract, he described President Pierce's administration as 'nonsense under the name of respectability', and Congress as: 'bought, sold ... prostituted, and filled with prostitutes,'4 while in 'A Song For Occupations' Whitman declared to Americans that the 'President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him ... is it you then that thought yourself less? Is it you that thought the President greater than you?'

His faith in individual sovereignty was expressed through 'assimilating images of virtually every aspect of American culture in a poetic document of togetherness, offered to a nation that seemed on the verge of unraveling.'6

Throughout the Mexican-American war that began in 1846, Whitman worked as an editor on the Democratic newspaper the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. A party loyalist and American nationalist, Whitman supported President Polk's war and expansionist aims, but he began to doubt the administration's intentions concerning the legality of forced slave labour in the US occupied western territories.

At this time, Whitman seemed to have no concern for the slaves, either as individuals or workers - his concern was that the southern US states, in demanding the legalisation of slave labour in war won territories, (where it had been outlawed by the Mexican Republic), were placing their own sectional interests above the national interest.7

In the Eagle, Whitman criticised Americans who demanded the emancipation of all slave workers8. Believing that to advocate the end of slave labour in the southern states would lead to disunion, or the separation of the slave states from the US, (northern advocates of which he termed 'demagogues'9), he sought what he thought was a compromise that avoided such extremes.

No-one had 'the least shadow of a right to interfere ... in the present slave states' he wrote, 'but in new land, added to our surface by the national arms, and by the action of our government ... it is certainly of momentous importance ... whether that land shall be slave land or not.'10

In an appeal to reason and religion, Whitman declaimed that all Americans would be 'derelict to our highest duties as Christians, as men, and as democrats' if slave labour was not opposed in the western territories. 'Is this the country, and this the age, where and when we are to be told that slavery must be propped up and extended?'11

Even this conservative editorial was too moderate for the Eagle's racist right-wing proprietor. The Democrats had tried to avoid making a committed stand on the question of whether to allow Black slave labour to be legalised in these new territories, and interpreted Whitman's editorials as criticism of the administration's indecision.12 Shortly after US soldiers entered Los Angeles in 1848 and added vast Mexican territories to the Union, advancing the United States to the Pacific Ocean for the first time, Whitman was fired as Eagle editor.

Walt Whitman worked in Louisiana on the New Orleans’ Daily Crescent after the loss of his position at the Eagle, but he returned to New York City to participate in the 1848 election. The Democrats had nominated Michigan Senator Lewis Cass, 'a colorless compromiser' who could not be trusted to stand up to the Southern slave owners. The Whig's presidential candidate was the military general and slave owner, Zachary Taylor, leaving Whitman with no choice, he felt, but to campaign for the nascent third party alternative, the Free Soil Party.

Despite radical campaign slogans proclaiming: 'No more slave states, no more slave territory and no more compromises!' and 'Free soil, free speech, free labor and free men!' the Free Soil Party represented white racists concerned at the 'unfair advantage' that slave labour gave Southern capitalists, and to whom association with Black Americans was a 'disgrace'.

'I would preserve for free white labor a fair country, a rich inheritance, where the sons of toil, of my own race and color, can live without (this) disgrace,' wrote a US congressman, and Whitman agreed. Black slaves had no voice in the debate - it was 'a question between ... white workers ... with their interests, on the one side - and the interests of the few thousand rich ... and aristocratic owners of slaves at the south, on the other,' he wrote.13

The indecisive Democratic Party lost the 1848 election, but the Free Soil Party's endorsement of continued slave labour in the south, with virtual apartheid in the west, failed to gather much electoral support - despite the right to vote being limited to white men.

The new Whig Party President, Zachary Taylor, immediately fell into the same indecisiveness and compromise that had befallen Polk over the western, 'free or slave' territories issue, leaving Whitman to lament the loss of the sense of principle in American politics.14 Writing in the New York Tribune on 14 June 1850, Whitman's anger is clear in his invective against compromisers, whom he branded as: 'crawlers, lice ... muck worms, creeping flat to the ground, a dollar dearer to them than Christ's blessing.'15

In an earlier poem, the 'Dough Face Song', he excoriated northern politicians who allowed the southern states to dictate the national interest. Fearful that compromise was erasing party principles and political debate, he attacked disinterested Americans in the northern cities who refused to be concerned:

We are all docile dough faces,
They knead us with the fist,
They, the dashing southern lords,
We labor as they list.16

After President Taylor's death on 9 July 1850, and the accession of Millard Fillmore, who merely continued Taylor's policies, Whitman became even more critical of the established political parties, and supported the Free Democratic independent party candidate, Senator John Hale, in the 1852 elections.

Campaigning against legislators removed from the 'great mass of the common people', Whitman's writing at this time was notable for his use of popular language in broadening his criticism to include elites and masters - America's ruling class - as opposed to its political leaders.17

In 'Resurgemus', Whitman expresses this theme while his poetry begins to assume the free verse form that characterises his later work:

That brief, tight, glorious grip
Upon the throats of kings,
You liars paid to defile the people,
Mark you now...
Worming from his simplicity the poor man's wages...
Each (leader) comes in state, with his train,
Hangman, priest and tax gatherer,
Soldier, lawyer and sycophant,
An appalling procession of locusts...18
The Democratic Party returned to the White House in the 1852 elections, while Hale's independent Free Democrats received 5 per cent of the vote. Southern slave labour became even more identified with President Franklin Pierce's administration than it had been with Fillmore and Taylor's.

Laws permitting white men to make their own decisions about the legality of slave labour in new western states, and the violent enforcement of the 'fugitive slave law' - using federal force to return escaped slaves to their masters - left Whitman contemptuous of the President.

‘The worst of the lot!' he declared,19 and suggested that former British King George III would feel at home in a United States at midcentury that used armed force to protect a landowning elite's slave labourforce:

Dig out King George’s coffin,
unwrap him quick from the graveclothes,
box up his bones for a journey,
Find a swift Yankee clipper,
here is freight for you blackbellied clipper,
Up with your anchor! shake out your sails!
steer straight towards Boston Bay.
Now call the President’s marshal,
and bring out the government cannon,
And fetch home the roarers from Congress…

The crown is come to its own and more than its own. 20
Increasingly convinced that America had become a corrupt, oppressive, illiberal society, Whitman instead directed his 'free thought'21 toward philosophical and religious interpretations of 'separate moments of ecstasy'.22 His greatest work, the free verse poetry collected as untitled pieces in Leaves Of Grass, although written throughout 1854, is not primarily concerned with the nationalistic, political, and Americanisation themes that Whitman had previously concentrated on, and was to return to.

'I celebrate myself,'23 he wrote, retreating into mysticism and personal empirical experience, in direct contrast to the political and social realities of racism, slave labour, segregation and increasing violence.

The 1856 presidential election brought Whitman back into these realities. The Whig Party had imploded, and populist, nationalist parties now opposed the Democrats, with Whitman supporting the Republican Party and its candidate, John Frémont, against James Buchanan.

Whitman wrote a campaign tract that viciously criticised his old party, and expressed his frustration with the corruption of liberal principles that he felt America stood for:

'No end of blusterers, braggarts ... a nuisance to these states ... have pistol'd, bludgeoned, yelled and threatened America. Is nothing but breed upon breed like these to be represented in the Presidency? Are parties to forever usurp the government? Are lawyers, dough faces, and the three hundred and fifty thousand owners of slaves, to sponge the mastership of thirty millions? Where is the real America? Where are the laboring persons, ploughmen, men with axes, spades, scythes, flails? Where are the carpenters, masons, machinists, drivers of horses, workmen in factories? Where is the common sense of These States? It does not appear in the government. It does not appear at all in the Presidency.' 24

Whitman emphasised in his midcentury writings the 'common man', 'Americans', and 'free labor,' in contrast to the 'idle rich' and the 'upper ten,' more frequently as the 1850s progressed.25 In 'Song Of Myself’, Whitman wrote a description of class relations in America that could have been inspired by his contemporary Karl Marx: 'Many sweating and ploughing and thrashing ... a few idly owning, and they the wheat continually claiming.'26

In 'The Eighteenth Presidency!' he warned American workers:

To butchers, sailors, stevedores, and drivers of horses - to ploughmen, woodcutters, marketmen, carpenters, masons and laborers - to workmen in factories - and to all in These States who live by their daily toil ... others are using the great word Americanism without yet feeling the first aspiration of it.27

Whitman wrote long lists and catalogs consisting of descriptions of workers and their tasks, celebrating free labour, and changing the definition of 'Americanism' into pride in the country's people rather than in its institutions, its Constitution, or its Presidency.28

He continued to relentlessly criticise US politics at this time, perhaps fuelled by James Buchanan's defeat of John Fremont, heralding yet another empty, amoral administration. Politicians were 'standing back in the shadow, telling lies,' selected by hacks who came from 'political hearses and from the coffins inside, and from the shrouds inside the coffins ... from the skeletons and skulls in the vaults.'29

As the Southern states became more confident with each Northern compromise over slave labour, and as each compromise failed to appease claims for unlimited expansion of that inhumanity into the western territories, secessionist demands dominated the political scene. Whitman responded with his 'democratic art'30

To the States or any one of them,
or any city of the States,
Resist much, obey little,
Once unquestioning obedience,
once fully enslaved.
Once fully enslaved,
no nation, state, city, of this earth,
ever afterward resumes its liberty. 31

Whitman also began to write on equality - implicitly, and sometimes directly, criticising slave labour and its cost to America, rather than merely criticising political compromise with the Southern states: 'I say where liberty draws not the blood out of slavery, there slavery draws the blood out of liberty.'32

Although his poetry was often personalised in the sense that he described his work as his 'thoughts', and he never confronted slave and landowners in name, Whitman had become dramatically radicalized through his experiences in the 1850s. In 1860 he could write: 'Of equality - as if it harm'd me, giving others the same chances and rights as myself - as if it were not indispensable to my own rights that others possess the same.'33

Once the Republican Party's candidate in the 1860 election, Abraham Lincoln, finally succeeded in dismissing the corrupt, old order that had been willing to compromise with the South, the United States faced a seemingly final and irrevocable split between the slave states and free states.

Whitman commented on the inevitability of conflict in an unpublished, untitled poem that became almost a futile, despairing plea for American unity:

States!

Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?
By an agreement on a paper? Or by arms?
Away!

I arrive, bringing these, beyond all the forces of courts and arms,
These! to hold you together as firmly as the earth itself is held together...

The dependence of Liberty shall be lovers, The continuance of Equality shall be comrades.

These shall tie and band stronger than hoops of iron,
I, extatic, O partners! O lands! henceforth with the love of lovers tie you.34

As the United States entered into total war once more, this time with itself, Walt Whitman's united American desires became a lament. As though in denial, he described with great beauty American nature, the 'scenes and attitudes' of the United States and its workers, and concluded more in hope than in reality:

O lands! all so dear to me…

Singing the song of These, my ever united lands,
my body no more inevitably united, part to part,
and made out of a thousand diverse contributions one identity,
any more than my lands are inevitably united and made
one identity. 35

The United States was not to be able to claim 'one identity' for several years, but through his prose, his poetry, and his newspaper writings, Walt Whitman, 'an American', was to continue to be its laureate.36

_____________________________________

Sources

1 Walt Whitman, Dough Face Song, March 1850, quoted in Reynolds, David S., Politics and Poetry, article collected in Greenspan, Ezra, Editor, Whitman, (Cambridge University Press, New York City 1995), p.73
2 Erkkila, Betsy, Whitman The Political Poet, (Oxford University Press, New York City 1989), passim
3 Walt Whitman, To The States, 1860, and Reynolds, p.67
4 Walt Whitman, The Eighteenth Presidency! 1856 election campaign tract, (unpublished), collected in Holloway, Emory, Editor, Walt Whitman, (Nonesuch Press, London 1938), p.588
5 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, The First Edition, (Viking Penguin, New York City, 1959), p.88
6 Reynolds, p.67
7 Walt Whitman, Daily Eagle editorial, 6 December 1847
8 Walt Whitman, Daily Eagle editorial, 29 May 1846
9 Walt Whitman, New States: Should They Be Slave Or Free? Article collected in Holloway, op. cit., p.556
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Reynolds, p.70
13 Walt Whitman, Daily Eagle editorial quoted in Holloway, Emory, Editor, Uncollected Poetry and Prose Of Walt Whitman, (Peter Smith, Gloucester 1972), p.171
14 Reynolds, p.73
15 Walt Whitman, Wounded In The House Of Friends, 1850, collected in Brasher, Thomas L., Editor, The Early Poems And The Fiction, (New York University Press, New York City, 1963), p.37
16 Walt Whitman, The Dough Face Song, collected in Brasher, p.44
17 Walt Whitman, letter to Senator John P. Hale, 1852, quoted in Reynolds, p.77
18 Walt Whitman, Resurgemus, New York Daily Tribune, 21 June 1850, collected in Holloway, p.505
19 Quoted in Reynolds, p.78
20 Walt Whitman, originally untitled, written in 1854, later titled A Boston Ballad and collected in the first edition of Leaves Of Grass, Brooklyn, New York City, 1855, (in 1959 edition, p.135)
21 Ralph Waldo Emerson, letter to Walt Whitman, 21 July 1855, reprinted in Leaves Of Grass, The First Edition, op. cit., p. ix
22 Malcolm Cowley, essay introduction to Leaves Of Grass, The First Edition, op. cit., pp.xiv-xv
23 Walt Whitman, Song Of Myself, 1855, Ibid., p.25
24 Walt Whitman, The Eighteenth Presidency! 1856, op. cit., p.588-9
25 The ‘upper ten’ was a popular term for bankers, financiers and landowners in the 1850s. (Reynolds, p.81)
26 Walt Whitman, Song Of Myself, 1855, op. cit., p.73
27 Walt Whitman, The Eighteenth Presidency! 1856, op. cit., p.593
28 Walt Whitman, I Hear America Singing (1860), A Song For Occupations (1855), Song Of The Broad Ax (1856), all collected in Holloway, op. cit., pp.12, 195 and 170.
29 Walt Whitman, quoted in Reynolds, p.88
30 Edward Dowden, Walt Whitman’s Leaves Of Grass, article in Westminster Review, No.96, July 1871
31 Walt Whitman, To The States! 1860, in Holloway, p.10
32 Walt Whitman, Says, 1860, in Holloway, p.523
33 Walt Whitman, Thought, 1860, in Holloway, p.254
34 Walt Whitman, untitled, 1860, in Holloway, p.519
35 Walt Whitman, Our Old Feuillage, 1860, in Holloway, p.158
36 Reynolds, p.87

Colombia - un país para todos

2007-05-28T18:11:00.000-05:00

The president’s supporters in Congress, whose election rightist paramilitaries claim to have bought or ensured through threats, intimidation and terror, proposed a ‘presidential coup’ recently – closing Congress to avoid the opposition taking control as more Uribista delegates are jailed in Colombia’s parapolítica scandal.

It is an indication as to how far to the right political debate is in Colombia that journalists and politicians considered this as a serious proposal - the Interior and Justice Minister thought it ‘interesting’ - but the proposal also reflects a concern among this elite that for the first time since 1948, a leftist opposition is rising.

The Polo Democrático Alternativo, a coalition that unites all the significant leftist political parties and factions in Colombia, has dramatically realigned politics and displaced the traditional, clientilist Liberal Party as the principal opposition to President Álvaro Uribe Vélez and the right.

Carlos Gaviria, the Polo’s presidential candidate, achieved an unprecedented 2.5 million votes in the 2006 elections, despite President Uribe demanding that Colombians choose between his militarization and authoritarian policies or ‘los comunistas disfrazados’ – ‘the disguised Communists’ in the opposition.

And this despite the fact that these elections are now known to have been fraudulent on the Caribbean coast, where paramilitaries bought votes, and in Colombia’s heartland where the President’s 98% vote totals in some districts recalled presidential ‘elections’ in Batista’s Cuba or Stroessner’s Paraguay.

Against increasing state paramilitarization - Uribista congress representatives, senators and military generals collaborating with the narcoparamilitaries in assassinating union workers and leftist opposition - the Polo has courageously continued to fight for a different Colombia that prioritises the poor, workers and desterrados.

Liberal Senator Jorge Eliécer Gaitan attempted to do this in the Forties, proposing policies that could have made him Colombia’s Franklin Roosevelt. His almost certain election as president was denied when he was assassinated in 1948, and the Bogotazo riots that followed, with Gaitan’s supporters burning downtown Bogotá and threatening an insurrection, demonstrated the fervent desire for such change.

The leftist Unión Patriótica tried to organise union workers and communist activists against the traditional Conservative and Liberal parties’ patronage and corruption in the late Eighties, but rightist paramilitaries and narco terrorists assassinated UP presidential candidates, Congress representatives and almost 4,000 UP members to avoid this progressive challenge to the state.

In 2007, the political realignment that has taken place all over Latin America has isolated Colombia on the right - just Perú, México and some Central American republics still adhere to the imported United States ‘consensus’ that favours corporate interests over social policies.

The leftist politics that are now dominant on the continent have closed down space for the right in Colombia to suppress opposition, and it is in part due to this favourable international scene that the Polo Democrático has risen to challenge President Uribe and the paramilitaries.

The Polo’s success has been evident in uniting the splintered left opposition into a coherent political force that even Colombia’s most influential newspaper, El Tiempo, considers a ‘credible option with the possibility to take power.’ The coalition has overcome the left’s historical sectarianism to include the Communists, Movimiento 19 and organised workers in the Confederación Unitaria de Trabajadores union confederation. The communist Voz newspaper commented that the dissident Liberals attracted to the coalition meant the Polo represented ‘the first time in Colombia that the revolutionary left and the social democratic left have united together.’

Originally organised as a loose coalition in 2005, the Polo achieved 708,000 votes in the March 2006 Congressional elections to elect 9 senators and 8 representatives. 380,000 coalition members voted in the Polo’s election to choose Carlos Gaviria as the presidential candidate, and despite a virtual media blackout and the paramilitaries’ bought votes, 2.5 million Colombians voted for ‘un país para todos.’

Proposing similar social policies to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s Bolívarian revolution, the Polo is organising amongst Colombians who have never participated in politics. ‘The Polo should not be just an electoral party,’ Senator Antonio Navarro insists, ‘it must have a presence in all Colombia,’ and reach workers in Ciudad Bolívar in Bogotá, the desterrados in Medellín’s comunas, the desperate poor in Chocó’s Pacific coast shanty towns and the indigenous.

Organising at a local level, on the streets in the barrios, proposing redistributive policies that favour the poor, the Polo has encouraged democratic participation to avoid association with the patronage and clientilism that has discredited the traditional parties. Candidates are chosen in open consultations, and 555,000 members chose the delegates to the party’s first united congress in December 2006 to reiterate the Polo’s commitment to progressive social change.

‘No-one in the Polo is to accept an Ambassador or Minister position,’ Carlos Gaviria declared, citing a favourite tactic Colombia’s political elite has often used to co-opt opposition, ‘our party is not opportunist and cannot be bought.’ And in Congress, Polo representatives such as Wilson Borja, a union organiser who has survived an assassination attempt, and Senators Alexander López and Gustavo Petro have proved to be the most effective opposition to the Uribistas.

President Uribe has also contributed to the left’s resurgence - originally a Liberal, he continued the Liberal’s opportunistic tradition, standing as a Conservative supported independent in the 2002 presidential elections. The president’s ‘undisciplined coalition,’ according to El Tiempo, has since had an unintended effect - scattering and splintering the right, leaving no clear successor once Uribe’s second term ends in three years.

Further to this, the traditional Conservative and Liberal parties have been co-opted, more than 20 Uribista representatives in paramilitary front parties have so far been jailed in the parapolítica scandal, and Colombian politics have been polarised leaving little choice for the president’s opponents but to support the left. ‘The elites’ traditional parties, their similar policies and patrician leaders have been replaced,’ commented one writer, ‘Colombian politics are now like Bolivia or Venezuela – left and right oppose each other and could never compromise.’

‘In Colombia exists the most arrogant opulence together with the most shameful poverty,’ Carlos Gaviria said in the election campaign. ‘Disguised communists,’ responded the intemperate president, and referring to the Polo’s campaign colour, said the opposition were ‘like papaya - yellow on the outside but red on the inside.’

Ever more increasing political polarisation in Colombia since the election has made the Polo’s challenge clearer. It has started to organise and mobilise the millions who did not vote at all in 2006 - 55% abstained in the presidential elections - and policies prioritising the poor, indigenous and workers reflect Latin America’s political realignment, echoing Méxican presidential candidate Manuel López Obrador’s 2006 ‘First the poor’ campaign and Venezuela’s Bolívarian revolution.

These threats to Colombia’s complacent elite have led the president’s Uribista representatives in Congress to propose the ‘coup’ in an attempt to avoid further opposition advances. But should that happen, the Polo’s organising amongst Colombia’s poor and in the barrios has ensured that it will not need Congress to be heard - the opposition will be in the streets, and Colombia will be a step nearer to joining Latin America’s left turn.

Bogotá, 28 de mayo de 2007

_________________________________

Sources

Algo esta cambiando en Colombia, Jaime Caicedo, Voz editorial, 6 de diciembre de 2006
¿Una opción de gobierno? Editorial, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 4 de diciembre de 2006
¿Democracia formal o Democracia participative? Diana Sánchez, opinion article on Polo Democrático Alternativo site, Bogotá, 25 de abril 2007
Cuatro mil delegados, article in Voz, Bogotá, 29 de noviembre de 2006
Garzón y Gaviria dicen que ‘impasse’ esta superado, Carlos Camacho Marín, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 28 de noviembre de 2006
Esto tiene que cambiar, Héctor Rincón, Cambio, Bogotá, 22 de mayo de 2006
El Polo por fin llegó a su punto de equilibrio, article in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 3 de diciembre de 2006
PDA: Unidad y solución política, Alvaro Angarita, Voz, Bogotá, 6 de diciembre de 2006
¿Oposición al fin? Jorge Restrepo, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 28 de abril de 2007
Polo a tierra, Edmundo López Gómez, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 6 de diciembre de 2006
Antonio Navarro interview in El Tiempo, 3 de diciembre de 2006
‘Farc seguir en armas es un error’: Polo, article in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 1 de diciembre de 2006
Discurso de Carlos Gaviria Díaz, Polo presidential candidate, Bogotá, 28 de mayo de 2006
Afrontar los claroscuros del Polo, Héctor León Moncayo, Desde Abajo, Bogotá, 30 de noviembre de 2006
‘Estamos comprometidos con la unidad’ Jaime Caicedo interview, Voz, Bogotá, 29 de noviembre de 2006
Uribe fue permisivo con las paras, Gustavo Petro interview, Cambio 16, Madrid, 22 de mayo de 2007
Polo 2010, Rodolfo Arango, El Espectador, Bogotá, 27 de mayo de 2006
La crisis política, Yezid García, article on Polo Democrático Alternativo site, Bogotá, 24 de mayo de 2007
Derecha e izquierda, Álvaro Sierra, Cambio, Bogotá, 7 de junio de 2006
La resurrección de las izquierdas, Armando Benedetti Jimeno, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 29 de mayo de 2006
Presidenciables 2010, article in Semana, Bogotá, 4 de septiembre de 2006
Preparándonos para gobernar a Colombia, headline article in ¿Que Qué? Bogotá, noviembre de 2006

Venezuela

2007-05-28T09:13:00.000-05:00

El Caribe

Realismo mágico

2007-05-25T11:07:00.001-05:00

Colombia’s magical realism

Consider the parapolítica scandal - the state’s participation in the terrorism and assassinations that rightist paramilitaries have inflicted on Colombia.

Ambassadors, congress representatives, senators, state governors – more than 50 national and local elected representatives who participated in state paramilitarism are under investigation, have been arrested or jailed, or are wanted fugitives in México and the United States.

Colombia’s elite Santos clan – owners of the country’s most influential newspaper, El Tiempo, whose former editor is now the Vice President, and whose cousin is the Defense Minister – are implicated in assisting to organise the first paramilitaries in the Nineties.

The Foreign Minister resigned as her brother Senator was jailed, and an arrest warrant was issued for her former Senator father - who is now a fugitive on the run - wanted for collaborating with paramilitaries.

Accusations that the information director in the president’s intelligence service - Colombia’s CIA - compiled hit lists targeting union organisers and opposition activists to pass onto the paramilitaries to assassinate.

Illegal surveillance operations against opposition politicians and journalists investigating the parapolítica scandal, resulting in several senior police officers being fired, including the chief of police intelligence - Colombia’s FBI - and the national police chief.

The president’s supporters in Congress, whose election the paramilitaries claim to have bought or ensured through intimidation, threats and terror, proposing a ‘presidential coup’ - closing Congress to avoid the opposition taking control as more Uribista delegates are jailed - a proposal the Interior and Justice Minister thought ‘interesting.’

One might think that Colombia is in crisis - the president must be isolated in his palace writing his resignation and waiting to be arrested for acquiescing in the state’s paramilitarization.

But according to the latest opinion polls, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez has an unprecedented 85% approval rating.
Articles in Colombian newspapers are often unsigned, so as to avoid a fate common to Iraqi journalists under American occupation - contentious opinions are often met with threats, assassination attempts and forced exile - but several newspaper columnists in Bogotá have courageously raised questions about the president’s apparent stratospheric popularity.

Referring to Colombians forcibly displaced as a paramilitary war tactic, and to a poor barrio in Bogotá, one writer asks, ‘how many desterrados or workers in Ciudad Bolívar are interviewed in these opinion polls?’

The opinion pollsters state that their interviews take place by phone, and just in the largest cities. One pollster admitted that Colombia’s highest, or wealthiest strata, constituted almost 20% of respondents, even though nowhere near 20% of Colombians are in this elite - even in Spain the highest class is considered to constitute just 15% of the population.

The fact that one hour interviews with respondents were conducted by phone raised further concerns - just 54% of Colombians have access to a private phone, and one can only speculate as to how many workers have an hour’s free time to answer questions. As another writer pointed out, domestic workers cleaning expensive apartments in strata 6 zones - the wealthiest areas - wouldn’t have the time, but the rich whose time is freed thanks to the labour of these workers, would.

In Colombia, where those in absolute poverty are 50% of the entire country, some incredulous journalists refused to accept that the opinion polls accurately reflected Colombian opinion. Those that investigated a little deeper discovered that one influential opinion poll director was an unapologetic Uribista, who expressed his contempt for the poor by claiming the unemployment figures merely measured ‘those who are not interested in work.’

But other unsigned articles seem to be designed to attempt to close down debate - the business magazine Cambio claims that the president has a ‘blank cheque’ from 85% of Colombians to do whatever he wants, while the political elite’s magazine, Semana, without the slightest reflection or doubt, confidently states that ‘Colombians believe Uribe is one of the greatest presidents.’

It is not clear who the writers at Semana have been talking to, but it is clear on whose behalf the magazine makes this claim - Colombia’s richest man, Julio Santo Domingo, recently made the same claim and also hoped that the Constitution could be changed again to allow Uribe to be re-elected to a third term.

It is also certain that there are some Colombians whose opinions this elite believes are not worth consideration.

On the Pacific coast live the most desperate and poorest citizens in Colombia, descendants of Caribbean slaves brought to this tropical rainforest in 1728 to mine gold for the Spanish empire. After the Colombian Republic ended the slave trade in 1851, American precious metal companies moved in to expropriate the land and still, American fruit companies continue to exploit Pacific coast workers on banana, sugarcane and palm oil plantations.

In the largest Pacific coastal state, Chocó, this relentless exploitation has resulted in an incredible 85% poverty rate. At least 50 children have died due to malnutrition so far in 2007, and state disinterest, according to the leftist opposition Polo Democrático, has left health, education and nutrition in a critical and precarious position.

‘Chocó’s cacaos’ - the corrupt bosses in the state - have participated in the paramilitaries cocaine wars, the Polo states, deliberately displacing peasant workers that resist their communities’ militarization. The displaced have created desperate shanty towns on the Pacific coast where, in scenes reminiscent of the poverty and inequality in Haití, many Colombians are now forced to scrape a living on less than 2 dollars a week.

Colombia’s most prestigious sociologist, Alfredo Molano, writes, ‘Chocó is a colonial state,’ paramilitaries, politicians and corporations, ‘have left children displaced, malnourished and dead…’ Black Colombians ‘have been exploited by the white elite and their racist, thieving economic liberalism,’ and this elite has been protected by Uribe’s Democratic Security policies that militarise the shanty towns and criminalise dissent.

But in Colombia’s magical realism state, editorial writers in Bogotá are convinced that ‘Colombia’s greatest president,’ and his ‘undisputed’ 85% approval rating, reflect reality. There is no desperate hunger in Colombia, there are no desterrados - the paramilitaries are not resurgent and union workers are not assassinated.

‘¿Parapolítica? ¿Qué es eso?’ declares Semana. ‘The president continues rising in the polls,’ headlines El Tiempo. It is as though the deeper the crisis becomes, the more Colombia’s elite retreats into their own reality, a magical Colombia that will forever believe in the president’s 2006 election campaign slogan, Con Uribe, más que nunca - ‘with Uribe, more than ever.’

Bogotá, 20 de mayo de 2007

______________________________________

Sources

¿Parapolítica? ¿Qué es eso? Report in Semana, Bogotá, 12 de marzo de 2007
…Ni qué niño muerto, Alfredo Molano, El Espectador, Bogotá, 31 de marzo de 2007
Death squad scandal circles closer to Colombia’s president, Simon Romero and Jenny Carolina González, New York Times, United States, 15 May 2007
Chocó: la crisis, las intervenciones, las mentiras de gubernamentales, Polo Democrático Alternativo de Chocó statement, Quibdo, 18 de abril de 2007
Cuestionario para el encuestador, Daniel Coronell, Semana, 12 de marzo de 2007
Desterrados: crónicas del desarraigo, Alfredo Molano, El Áncora, Colombia, 2001
El largo brazo del narcoparamilitarismo colombiano, Hernando Calvo Ospina, Telesur report, Caracas, 9 de mayo de 2007
Días de tempestad, headline report in El Espectador, Bogotá, 20 de mayo de 2007
Presidente Uribe sigue arriba en encuesta, article in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 8 de marzo de 2007
Cocaine wars, photographer: Scott Dalton, New York Times, United States, 2007
The best laid plans of presidents and war criminals: The unintended outcome of Colombia’s demobilizacion process, Garry Leech, Colombia Journal, United States, 17 May 2007
¡Ave María! Cover report in Cambio, Bogotá, 20 de mayo de 2007
Chocó – ¿el pasado o el futuro? Aurelio Suárez Montoya, Centro de Medios Independientes, Quibdo, 9 de abril de 2007
Entremeses, Alfredo Molano, El Espectador, Bogotá, 20 de mayo de 2007
La favorabilidad del presidente, O L González, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 12 de marzo de 2007
Los niños del Chocó, Libardo Muñoz, Centro de Medios Independientes, Bogotá, 30 de marzo de 2007
Más que complicado, Alfredo Molano, El Espectador, Bogotá, 7 de abril de 2007
¿Uribe III? Report in Semana, Bogotá, 29 de enero de 2007
Los errors de Gallup, Daniel Coronell, Semana, Bogotá, 26 de marzo de 2007
Barbacoa children and streets, photographer: Kris Lane, William and Mary College, United States, 1995
Paramilitary ties to elite in Colombia are detailed, Juan Forero, Washington Post, United States, 22 May 2007
¿Una encuesta embuchada? María Isabel Rueda, Semana, Bogotá, 19 de marzo de 2007
Al Chocó lo esta matando la rosca, Néstor López, Quibdo report in El Tiempo, Bogotá, 1 de abril de 2007
La confianza en las encuestas, O L González, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 2 de abril de 2007
Momentos amargos, article in El Espectador, Bogotá, 20 de mayo de 2007

Cartoon coup d'etat

2007-05-22T10:51:00.000-05:00

‘Coup d’etat rats: the people don’t forget’

‘The Presidential Palace is in our hands – why don’t you show that?’ Chávez’s supporters shouted to the journalists… instead, RCTV was broadcasting Looney Tunes cartoons.

Venezuela takes an important step towards democratizing its media on 28 May when a billion dollar media corporation loses its television broadcast license to ‘those who almost never have a voice,’ in President Hugo Chávez’s words.

Radio Caracas Television – RCTV – and its multi-millionaire owner, Marcel Granier, who are about to lose their unceasing political war against Chávez and Venezuela’s Bolívarian revolution, are claiming that ‘independent media are being closed down,’ that Chávez is a dictator intent on ‘restricting freedom of expression and democratic rights.’

Reporters without Borders declares that RCTV losing its license is ‘a serious attack on editorial pluralism’, while editorials in US newspapers have predictably misrepresented the controversy, claiming Chávez is retaliating against his critics in the opposition media who ‘disagree’ with the Bolívarian revolution.

The reality is rather different. As Reporters without Borders doesn’t mention, perhaps understandably so, given its financing by the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy - which also finances rightist opposition political parties in Venezuela - RCTV was an active participant in the violent coup d’etat that deposed President Chávez for almost 48 hours in 2002.On the day of the coup, RCTV abandoned all pretence to report news impartially, calling opposition supporters to illegally demonstrate at the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas while showing the constant on screen message ‘Ni un paso atras’ – ‘Not one step back.’

It deliberately showed film from one angle to falsely claim that Chávez supporters were firing on opposition demonstrators, when another camera angle would have shown that Chávez supporters were defending themselves from sniper attacks – no opposition demonstrators were in sight. The constant repeated broadcasting of this film was then used as justification for some military officers to declare their ‘disobedience’ to the president, and these declarations were faithfully broadcast to attempt to legitimise a military takeover.

The American editorial writers who fail to mention all this, also fail to comment on the Venezuelan media’s support for the subsequent fascist junta that took control in Caracas and proceeded to dismiss the entire Supreme Court and the Congress, suspend the constitution, arrest the democratically elected president and then sent armed police onto the streets to suppress any resistance.
A junta member, Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, thanked journalists on live TV the day after the coup, saying that the organisers ‘had a weapon - the media - let me congratulate you,’ and the businessman the junta chose to be ‘president’, Pedro Carmona, summoned media executives to Miraflores to ensure that opposition to the coup was not reported.

RCTV’s boss, Granier, denied he ever met Carmona during the coup, despite film showing his presence at Miraflores, and while Granier still refers to the junta leader as ‘President Carmona', RCTV’s subsequent actions demonstrated that no instructions were necessary to keep it on message.

As Venezuelans took to the streets to demand the return of President Chávez, fighting the police and demonstrating at Miraflores in their thousands against the coup, RCTV, contrary to the constant coverage it awarded the opposition demonstration that led to the coup, intentionally blacked out this breaking news, and as RCTV production manager at the time, Andrés Izarra, later related, Granier himself ordered journalists ‘not to broadcast information on Chávez, his supporters or anyone connected to him.’

The Chávez demonstrators coming down from the poor shanty towns on the mountains above Caracas encouraged soldiers loyal to the president to take back Miraflores and arrest the junta. Helicopters were sent to the Caribbean island where the president had been kept prisoner, and barely 48 hours after the right had attempted to take Venezuela back to the military dictatorship of the Fifties, the coup had failed and Chávez had returned to an ecstatic welcome.
However, none of the resistance to the coup, the junta’s arrest or Chavez’s return could be seen on television screens. Amid the coup’s complete collapse, and on probably the most dramatic day in Venezuela’s recent history, RCTV was showing Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoons.

Other opposition media followed its lead. No rightist newspapers were printed or distributed the following day – but the leftist Últimas Noticias in Caracas told Venezuela what had happened, and the Chávista Panorama newspaper published four editions in 20 hours as its journalists reported on the coup’s stunning defeat.

It is not difficult to imagine that had CNN or the New York Times acted in the United States as RCTV had done in Venezuela, their executives would now be in Guantánamo, but President Chávez responded with restraint, imploring the media to think about the fascist nature of the junta it had supported: ‘Reflect a little, for God’s sake! It’s your country too!’

No journalists or media executives were jailed or persecuted after the coup, and once the opposition dominated Supreme Court declared that, in their opinion, ‘no coup had taken place,’ Pedro Carmona and other putchists were released, and the right once again went on the offensive against Chávez’s Bolívarian revolution.

Marcel Granier’s RCTV now abandoned any pretence at professional journalism, concerning itself with the political impact of its propagandistic ‘news’ broadcasts, rather than adhering to anything that resembled journalistic ethics. In all, five private television stations, reaching 90% of Venezuela’s viewers, and nine of the ten national newspapers, support the opposition.

Despite US newspaper editorialists claiming that the state is restricting criticism of President Chávez, it is clear to anyone who reads these newspapers or watches Venezuela TV, that the vast majority are implacably hostile to the revolution and critical of the president. There is no censorship, as there is in US client states such as Saudi Arabia, and journalists are not intimidated or assassinated as in México and Colombia.

US President Bush’s recent inaccurate claim that Venezuela has ‘repressive laws’ that ‘severely restrict the liberty of the press,’ hardly stands up to scrutiny, especially when, as Venezuelan Vice-President Jorge Rodríquez pointed out, ‘the only television channel closed down for political reasons during this Bolívarian administration was the pro-Chávez Canal 8 in 2002. It was taken off the air on the first night of the coup by Pedro Carmona’s fascist junta.’

The disproportionate criticisms have more to do with Chávez’s challenge to the unaccountable elite that clearly limits ‘editorial pluralism’ by using its ownership and control of the media to present its own privileged interests as those of all Venezuelans. Accustomed to operating their lucrative commercial television channels for decades without democratic oversight, this elite has come to believe this privileged position is their ‘right.’

Chávez has pointed out that broadcasting licenses are concessions, and are not granted in perpetuity. In fact, Venezuelan law and the Bolívarian Constitution confer certain responsibilities, such as ensuring the public receives ‘true and accurate information,’ on the media corporations that are granted these concessions, as does the respective media laws in the United States and most other countries.

RCTV’s concession to broadcast on Venezuela’s terrestrial Canal 2 frequency expires on 28 May. The government has decided not to renew RCTV’s concession, citing, among other crimes such as not paying taxes, the station’s failure to provide ‘true and accurate information’ during the 2002 coup, when its executives intentionally refused to report breaking news and critical information to the public and imposed its ‘cartoon blackout.’

‘This decision is an irreversible fact,’ William Lara, Venezuela’s Communications and Information Minister declared, ‘the Constitutional, legal and regulatory basis for the decision is solidly incontrovertible.’ For the first time in Venezuela, the privileged media elite has come up against a government that cannot be bought, bribed or intimidated.

Moreover, the Bolívarian revolution’s originality doesn’t stop with challenging elite interests. A new television service, Televisora Venezolana Social (Venezuelan Social TV or TEVES), will take over the Canal 2 frequency, Chávez has announced. It will be run by an independent foundation and have independent, community and alternative programming and participation, promoting Venezuelan film and program production.

Although the new TEVES station will initially receive government financing, which the British state financed BBC rather ironically claimed ‘might affect its independence’, it will not be required to broadcast government programmes such as Chávez’s ‘¡Alo, Presidente!’, and it will be able to take commercial advertising to eventually allow it to be self financing.

Corporate media in almost all countries is often unresponsive, unaccountable and inaccessible, permitting virtually no popular participation in film production and programming. Venezuela’s attempt to start to democratize the broadcast media has been met with predictable criticism from that corporate media, who continue to insist that a tiny, wealthy elite - and not a democratic government elected time and time again with a massive popular vote - should have the right to control what is seen and heard on the airwaves.

As for Granier and RCTV, some in the opposition believe it is no loss to have the station lose its license. ‘RCTV wasn’t even good at propaganda,’ wrote one anti-Chávez columnist citing Chávez’s return after the coup and massive election win in 2006, ‘the point of giving up journalism is to increase the political effectiveness of what is broadcast, and on that score RCTV has certifiably failed.’

But all is not lost for the anti-Chávez opposition – RCTV can still broadcast on cable and satellite, and should there be news it doesn’t like, it will be free to black it out with as many Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoons as it likes.

Bogotá, 17 de mayo de 2007

____________________________________
Sources

La no renovación de la concesión a RCTV es irreversible, Agencia Bolívariana de Noticias report in Aporrea.org, Caracas, 2 de enero de 2007
Bush critica restricciones a la libertad de expressión, headline report in El Nacional, Caracas, 4 de mayo de 2007
Publicados en Gaceta Oficial estatutos de Televisora Venezolana Social, Radio Nacional de Venezuela report, Caracas, 15 de mayo de 2007
El periodismo de Venezuela en 2002, Eleazar Díaz Rangel, Últimas Noticias report in BBC Mundo, Caracas, 4 de abril de 2007
Venezuela, National Endowment for Democracy report at http:/ /www.ned.org/ grants/Venezuela, United States, 2005
RCTV: Censorship or broadcaster responsibility, PR Watch report, Center for Media and Democracy, United States, 19 January 2007
Not about free speech, George Ciccariello, Caracas report in Counterpunch, United States, 12 January 2007
The 47 hour coup that changed everything, Gregory Wilpert, Venezuela Analisis, United States, 13 April 2007
Chávez/RCTV: ¿censura o decisión legítima? Salim Lamrani, Progreso, United States, 7 February 2007
¿Una revancha política? article in El Espectador, Bogotá, 13 de mayo de 2007
Hugo Chávez, the media, and everybody else, Nicki Mokhtari and Larry Birns, Council on Hemispheric Affairs report, United States, 19 January 2007
US papers hail Venezuelan coup as pro-democracy move, report in Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), United States, 18 April 2002
Lara: Granier patea los derechos de los usarios, Prensa Ministro de Comunicación e Información statement on Aporrea.org, Caracas, 6 de enero de 2007
Media accused in failed coup, David Adams and Phil Gunson, St. Petersburg Times, United States, 18 April 2002
Las perlas de un fascista mediático, Lubriorama Stereo film, director: Luigino Bracci Roa, Venezuela, released: May 2007
Venezuela investiga el ‘Carmonazo,’ Carlos Chirinos, BBC Mundo, Caracas, 5 de octubre de 2004
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Bórd Scannán na hÉireann film, directors: Bartley and O’Briain, Eire, released: September 2003
Venezuela’s press power, Maurice Lemoine, Le Monde Diplomatique, París, August 2002

Bogotá

2007-05-20T16:06:00.000-05:00

Central

Rumbo a la Revolución Bolívariana!

2007-05-20T15:04:00.000-05:00

PSUV - democratic politics of the future with participation and popular support at its heart.

President Chavez’s call to unite the Venezuelan left in the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) came after his third, crushing, election win on 3 December 2006.

The media in America immediately, and falsely, claimed the President intended to outlaw all political parties, and US newspaper editorials continued their strikingly unoriginal echoing of the Bush administration’s opposition to the Bolívarian revolution, to claim that Venezuela would soon become a single party state.

What Chávez had actually declared was the formation of a new revolutionary party to attempt to unite the Venezuelan left. No rightist or opposition parties would be closed or banned, and even the leftist parties currently forming part of the Bolívarian coalition would be free to choose to unite in the new party or not.

One of Chavez’s intentions was to try to avoid sectarianism and political infighting within the governing coalition, and to avoid implications for clientilism associated with the discredited COPEI and Acción Democrática regimes of the past, when political party bosses dispensed favours to their supporters.

Although Chávez’s own Movimiento Quinta República (MVR) party won 42% in the elections, and organises the great majority of Bolívarian revolution activists, other militants, union workers and communists were organised in small, splintered political parties that together contributed another 20% to the vote to re-elect Chávez.

At a 15 December 2006 political meeting in Caracas, Chávez recalled that a splintered left coalition allowed the contradictions between diverse political parties in Chile to divide President Salvador Allende’s progressive government, letting the right take advantage and depose him in a military coup.

Chávez, having defeated one US inspired coup through the collective force of Venezuelans taking over the capital, Caracas, believes ‘there is no time to lose’ to unite the various political parties supporting the Bolívarian revolution into a single force.

The president immediately dissolved his own MVR organisation into the PSUV after the election, and called on all the other organisations that supported his re-election to call congresses and meetings to put his proposal to a vote among their party members.

Completely contrary to the American media’s unoriginal cartoon image of the Venezuelan revolution, President Chávez made clear that ‘no-one should feel obliged to join the PSUV,’ and in his own characteristic style, Chávez compared the act of joining the new party to the ‘act of love’, telling activists in the other parties comprising the Bolívarian coalition that, ‘if you don’t feel it, it’s better not to do it… it is not obligatory, and we are not going to reject you if you don’t.’

Nine leftist parties have now decided to participate in the PSUV, but the largest organisations in the coalition – the Communist PCV, Patria Para Todos (PPT), and Por La Democracia Social (Movimiento Podemos) – took the decision to remain independent while continuing to support the revolution.

In the case of the Venezuelan Communist Party, which originated in 1931 and endured persecution under the dictators Juan Vicente Gómez in the Thirties and Marcos Pérez Jiménez in the Fifties, the reluctance to unite in the PSUV reflects a long history of independent activism.

The PSV’s popularity has surged under Chavez’s presidency due to its active participation in the Bolívarian revolution, and last year a member of the Central Committee, David Velásquez, became the first Communist to be appointed to a cabinet position.

After a Communist Party congress in March to discuss the president’s invitation to unite in the PSUV voted to remain independent, PCV leader, Oscar Figuera, declared that the party would still continue to be part of the Venezuelan revolution, and will contribute to the PSUV’s ‘construction’, but ‘without dissolving the Communist Party’.

PCV president, Jerónimo Carrera, 84, who was imprisoned three times under Pérez Jiménez’s dictatorship, declared that the party ‘will wait for the moment… it is not possible to dissolve the Communist Party into a new organisation that still doesn’t have democratic structures or a program. The Communist Party continues to exist.’

Despite this, the congress resolved to delegate activists to assist in building the PSUV, and the PCV intends to present its opinions to the new party to be considered for incorporation into the PSUV’s policies, in the hope that the new party will have strong Marxist credentials.

However, some communists believe their party is missing an opportunity to strengthen the Bolívarian revolution, and in the face of individual members - including 13 on the Central Committee - joining the PSUV, the PCV has been obliged to declare that ‘double militancy is not permitted’ – effectively expelling these activists.

Similar difficulties have arisen in the Patria Para Todos (PPT) party – heirs to the leftist opposition La Causa R (Radical Cause) party that had opposed the corrupt COPEI and Acción Democrática governments since 1971. The PPT won a 5% vote in December 2006 to contribute to Chavez’s re-election, and its decision not to unite in the PSUV has caused prominent leaders such as union organiser and former Caracas mayor Aristóbulo Istúriz, and former foreign minister Alí Rodríguez Araque, to leave the party.

The third significant party to decide not to unite, Podemos, justified its decision claiming that Chávez intended to use the PSUV to close political space in Venezuela. ‘We don’t participate, and we will never participate in pensamientos únicos (a single line of thinking),’ said the party’s president, Ismael García, ‘because Venezuela is a diverse society.’

President Chávez criticised Podemos for this claim, suggesting that some PSUV critics were ‘raising the flags of the right,’ and forcefully stated that he wanted the revolution to encourage a ‘debate of ideas’ to counter ‘capitalism’s pensamientos únicos.’

Following the president’s criticism, several Podemos congressional deputies and state governors left their party to unite in the PSUV, declaring that Podemos’ 7% share of the December vote was not a sectarian, or separate vote, but a vote for Chávez and the revolution.

The Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela, which these dissidents and the remaining nine leftist parties have united to create, ‘should be the most democratic political party in Venezuelan history’, Chávez declared after his re-election, ‘there have been too many leadership appointments from above, including by me, but the PSUV’s leaders will be elected from the base. Choose the people you have faith in – there shouldn’t be the same faces as always – a new party needs new leaders.’

Activists uniting in the PSUV believe the president will be more responsive to decisions and demands made through a single, united democratic party, rather than to those made by individual supporters or activists in various splintered coalition partners, but more than this, Chávez is encouraging Venezuelans to raise their sights and take their political participation further.

‘Make the PSUV a party that doesn’t just fight elections,’ Chávez wrote in a pamphlet distributed to the hundreds of thousands of workers who took to the streets all over Venezuela on International Workers’ Day, ‘make it more a party that can fight the battle of ideas… one for which we should study, read and discuss the way forward.’

It is envisaged that elections will take place in July for the PSUV’s leadership and for delegates to the first party congress, to be held in August or September. The political program and priorities decided at this congress will then have to be ratified in an all-party ballot in November.

Inscriptions to the PSUV are already estimated to have reached more than 1,000,000, while some Bolívarian government officials are anticipating that three million PSUV members will eventually be registered when the first congress is held.

It’s clear that the revolution’s reality is far from the black and white caricature the American press constantly represents. It is also obvious that President Chávez’s united party initiative represents a more democratic and inclusive vision of participatory politics than the United States’ corporate parties, millionaire candidates and exclusive politics of a self-selected elite could ever do.

Bogotá, 15 de mayo de 2007

________________________________
Sources

El discurso de la unidad, Hugo Chávez Frías, Caracas, 15 de Diciembre de 2006
Para la bancada roja la doble militancia es una ‘ambiguedad inaceptable’, Últimas Noticias, Caracas, 11 de Mayo de 2007
Marxismo, Leninismo, Bolívarianismo, Pedro Dumo, Caracas, 1969
Partido Comunista: Somos parte del proceso revoluciónario venezolano y no nos disolvemos, report in Tribuna Popular, Caracas, 8 de Mayo de 2007
Chávez aclara: No rechazamos a los que no quieren afiliarse al PSUV, report in Aporrea, Caracas, 6 de Mayo de 2007
Comunistas venezolanos definen postura ante partido unido, report in Prensa Latina, La Habana, 5 de Marzo de 2007
Rodríguez: PSUV es una necesidad estratégica, Agencia Bolívariana de Noticias report in Aporrea.org, Caracas, 12 de Mayo de 2007
Se resisten comunistas venezolanos para integrar partido único, AP report in El Universal, México, 4 de Marzo de 2007
El partido de la Revolución será el más democrático de la historia, Jorge Rodríquez, Agencia Bolívariana de Noticias report, Caracas, 20 de Abril de 2007
‘Patria, socialismo o muerte,’ Valentina Lares Martiz, El Tiempo, Bogotá, 11 de Enero de 2007
¡Uh, ah, Chávez no se va! Reportaje, Semana, Bogotá, 11 de Diciembre de 2006
Más de 1 millón de militantes captó el PSUV, Últimas Noticias report on Aporrea.org, Caracas, 15 de Mayo de 2007

Bolívar to take Asunción

2007-05-20T14:44:00.000-05:00

In 2008, Paraguay could replace the Colorado red of its past with a different shade of red – a revolutionary or Bolívarian red.
Former Catholic priest, Fernando Lugo Méndez, is almost certain to be the presidential candidate of a rising leftist opposition to the perpetual rule of Paraguay’s Colorado Party in the 2008 elections.

A May opinion poll in the Asunción newspaper Última Hora indicated that 40.8% of Paraguayans intended to vote for Lugo, against just 9% for the probable ruling party candidate supported by the current president, Nicanor Duarte.

Should Lugo be elected, Paraguay will become the latest Latin American nation to spurn the United States and reject the divisive neoliberal policies that have only further enriched an exclusive elite at the expense of the indigenous and workers.

That Paraguay, controlled since 1946 by the Colorado (or ‘Red’) Party – including the 34 year extreme right wing military dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner – should even contemplate joining Venezuela and Bolivia and most of Latin America in electing a progressive leftist as president, demonstrates just how far politics have changed on this continent.

Not since an attempted revolution against the fascist dictator Morínigo in March 1947, has Paraguay experienced such a concerted and united challenge for political control from the left. Since the rightist Colorado party’s victory in the civil war of that year, political repression, authoritarianism and single party rule had denied space to workers, their unions, and indigenous Guaraní, leftist and communist activists to organise or oppose the government.

Even after Stroessner was deposed in a military coup in February 1989, the Colorado Party has continued to rule Paraguay through patronage and corruption – utilising their advantage of decades of elitist control of the country to manipulate successive presidential elections – with disastrous results.

The General who overthrew Stroessner, Andrés Ródriquez Pedotti, who had amassed a large fortune during the dictatorship, was accused of profiting from heroin trafficking and ultimately denied a US visa even though he was president. His successor, Juan Carlos Wasmosy, appointed Stroessner’s supporters to government positions and on leaving office was convicted of fraud and sentenced to 4 years’ imprisonment.

The next Colorado administration saw the Marzo Paraguayo events in March 1999, when then president, Raúl Cubas, tried to pardon General Lino Oviedo who had been imprisoned for attempting a military coup in 1996. Cubas’ own vice-president, Luís María Argaña, instituted impeachment proceedings against Cubas, but was assassinated in the capital, Asunción, sparking riots and demonstrations which Cubas attempted to suppress by putting tanks on the streets.

After eight protesters were killed by the military, representatives in Congress voted to dismiss Cubas from the presidency, but before the Senate could ratify the impeachment, Cubas resigned and fled to Brasil. Despite the resignation of the president and the assassination of the vice-president, the Colorado Party continued to hold onto power through the accession of Luís Ángel González, the president of the legislature - which the party controlled - to the presidency of the republic.

However, González did nothing to improve the Colorado Party’s miserable record – even using a stolen armoured BMW as his official car while illegally transferring millions of dollars from the Central Bank to accounts in the US. As soon as he lost his legal immunity upon leaving office, he was charged with fraud and embezzlement, convicted, and sentenced last year to 8 years in prison.

The latest Colorado president, Nicanor Duarte, elected in 2003 with 38% of the vote, has so far taken a less excessive approach to governing, and has attempted to pursue a centrist political line in the face of Latin America’s shift to the left, but the institutionalised privileges and patronage of the longest continual ruling party in the world continue to pressure the president to appease the right.

This reluctance, or inability, to change policies favourable to Paraguay’s elite, while all Latin America continues to elect and reelect progressive presidents who reject US priorities, has encouraged the country’s left to take the offensive and start to disprove Paraguayan sociologist Bernardino Caño’s assertion that the country has a ‘cultural fear of change’.

In 2006, a 50,000 strong demonstration took over Asunción to protest Colorado Party rule, and unionised workers, and leftist and indigenous organisations began to unite behind a Catholic bishop from one of Paraguay’s poorest areas, Lugo Méndez, who was speaking out forcefully against poverty and inequality.

Praising Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution for favouring the poor, Lugo, the ‘Bishop of the Poor’, as he is now popularly known, continually challenged Paraguay’s traditional elite, questioning why ‘there are so many differences between the 500 families who live with a first world standard of living while the great majority live in a poverty that borders on misery.’

Last December, Lugo renounced his ministry to participate in politics, not just to defeat the Colorado Party, but to ‘be more ambitious… to change the country.’ A forceful orator both in Spanish and Guaraní, the indigenous language that most Paraguayans speak, he declared that ‘united in our diversity… we will not allow our dreams to be frustrated.’

The response from Paraguay’s Catholic hierarchy was swift. ‘Monsignor Lugo is in a state of contempt, exposing himself to the punishment of excommunication,’ said the president of Paraguay’s Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Ignacio Gogorza, ‘Lugo does not have the permission of the Vatican to go into politics, so he is leaving Catholicism for poor choices… he cannot leave the cloth simply by resigning. His life devoted to religion is for one’s entire life.’

On February 1, the Vatican denied Lugo’s request to be laicized. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re wrote that Lugo must ‘remain in the clerical state,’ claiming that a bishop as a presidential candidate would be ‘a cause of confusion and division amongst the faithful and an offence to the laity.’

This indirect support for the Colorado Party from the Vatican has been further fuelled by Lugo’s adherence to liberation theology – the ‘preferential option for the poor’ tendency within Catholicism that emphasises a commitment to those less privileged – and which the official Church considers radical or revolutionary.

Although the Vatican’s rejection of Lugo’s resignation does not have legal force under Paraguay’s secular constitution, the closeness of the conservative Church hierarchy with the Colorado Party, and the Party’s control of the Supreme Court, Congress and Electoral Tribunal, could mean that Lugo’s presidential candidacy may be ruled invalid.

Lugo is undeterred, however, and returned to the streets in March with a 20,000 strong demonstration against the Supreme Court, whose justices are all members of the Colorado Party, calling on them to resign because of corruption and their partisan support for President Duarte.

Justice in Paraguay is ‘fast and cheap for the wealthy or those who have friends in power,’ Lugo told the demonstrators, ‘but new times are coming… a change can come in the short term… but we have to be aware to guarantee that the forces of chaos do not sabotage the awakening.’

The former priest continues to attract the almost unconditional support of many of the estimated 50% of Paraguayans who still live in poverty, and who have seen no gains from the failed neoliberal policies that the ruling party imported from the United States, but there are signs that support from the organised left in Paraguay is more qualified.

Communist Party activists have cautioned that workers ‘have to see what Lugo does, more than what he says,’ while the Popular Socialist Convergence Party points out that Lugo has considered an alliance with the traditional, and conservative, opposition coalition, Concertación Nacional, although no agreement has so far been formalised.

However, it is undeniable that most Paraguayans have expectations that the politics that Lugo says have ‘favoured narrow, partisan interests over those of the nation’ will be defeated in 2008. United with organised workers and indigenous activists, the massive popular support behind Lugo’s challenge to the elite and their Colorado Party could finally end the control this privileged minority has had over Paraguay for the last 60 years.

Bogotá, 8 de mayo de 2007
___________________________________

Sources

Ex obispo en carrera a la presidencia, Gustavo Torres, Noticias Aliadas, Lima, 3 de Mayo de 2007
Paraguay’s ruling party faces threat of a populist bishop, Larry Rohter, New York Times, United States, 27 February 2007
La falta de justicia, Fernando Lugo Méndez, ABC Digital, Asunción, 12 de Abril de 2007
Obispo de los pobres candidato de Tekojoja, Ernesto Herrera, Tekojoja, Asunción, 23 de Diciembre de 2006
Duarte: Queremos cambiar la historia, interview, BBC Mundo, Asunción, 15 de Agosto de 2003
US military in Paraguay threatens region, Project Uncensored report, United States, 18 September 2006
Stroessner, Paraguay’s enduring dictator, dies, D J Schemo, New York Times, United States, 16 August 2006
Paraguay’s peculiar politics, Teo Ballvé, North American Congress on Latin America report in Upside Down World, United States, 12 April 2007
El ex obispo Lugo acepta unirse a la coalición opositora en Paraguay, EFE report in El País, Madrid, 2 de Marzo de 2007
El cura candidate, AFP report in Semana, Bogotá, 19 de Febrero de 2007

Bogotá, Colombia

2007-05-20T14:19:00.000-05:00

Central

Sandinista!

2007-02-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

The Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional returned to the Presidential Palace in Nicaragua after defeating the right in the 2006 elections. José Daniel Ortega Saavedra, Sandinista candidate and former president, took 38.07 per cent or 854,000 votes to the Liberales 29 per cent - 650,000 votes, and the Constitutionalistas 26.5 per cent or 588,000 votes. The leftist Movimiento de Renovación Sandinista had 6.5 per cent - 145,000 votes.

Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia celebrated the Sandinistas return as a defeat for the United States and as evidence that Latin Americans continue to demand an end to American influence. The US had sponsored corrupt rightist administrations in Nicaragua since Ortega’s defeat in the 1990 elections that came after the Contras debilitating terrorist war against the Sandinistas.

Nicaragua’s elite and the US attempted to dismantle the Sandinista revolution’s achievements through President Chamorro’s attacks on workers and the poorest in the Nineties - health care was privatized, schoolchildren had to pay to attend classes, and illiteracy increased to 35 per cent while the poverty rate reached an incredible 70 per cent.

Chamorro’s successor, José Alemán, treated Nicaragua as his private bank, charging massive personal credit bills to the state and stealing almost 2 billion Córdobas - more than 100 million dollars.

After Enrique Bolaños became president in 2002, he refused to condemn his predecessor, and received a reputation as a rich, American client ruler hostile to Latin America’s historic left turn. Despite direct US interference in the 2006 elections, Nicaragua chose to end the elite’s dominance and voted the Sandinistas back in.

Bolivia’s President Morales, Sandinista’s Ortega
and Venezuela’s President Chávez in Managua, January 2007

Ortega Saavedra has not just retaken the Presidential Palace - the Sandinistas also became the largest political force in Congress, it controls the capital, Managua, and the FNT union confederation affiliated to the Sandinistas maintains Nicaragua’s 50 per cent unionization rate.

Immediately on taking office, the Sandinistas decreed a return to free medical care, and made a request to Cuba to send medics to assist in bringing health care to the poorest. School fees have been eliminated, and the Hambre Cero campaign to combat the poverty and hunger that had risen to affect most Nicaraguans has begun.

Ortega decreed a cut in all state officials’ exorbitant salaries, took a 68 per cent cut in his own presidential pay, and pledged to be intolerant towards corruption. Nicaragua has also joined Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba in the Alternativa Bolivariana para América Latina - Latin America’s alternative to US dominated international financial institutions - to assert its independence over economic policies.

Since the presidential inauguration in January 2007, Ortega and the Sandinistas have started to retake Nicaragua - replacing an American sponsored, privileged and corrupt elite to restate the Sandinista revolution’s priorities. And this time, Nicaragua is not alone.