desde los márgenes

Corrupted Justice and the Schizophrenic State in Colombia

Javier Giraldo M. , S.J. — 2006-01-18T00:41:15Z

On march 12,1999, THE ÍNTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS of the Organization of the American States published its Third Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Colombia. In the fifth chapter, it states

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RECONFIGURING HOPE IN A CONTEXT OF HOPELESSNESS

Javier Giraldo M. , S.J. — 2006-01-18T00:28:57Z

A couple of years ago, I gave a talk about my country's situation to a mainly Christian group, in Zaragoza, Spain, and when I finished, a woman scolded me, quite angrily, because I had left in the group a sensation that there would be no improvements and that the situation would continue to worsen. According to her, I had failed in my duty to give a lecture about the situation from the perspective of Christian hope and therefore leave a sensation of hope with the audience.

I responded that I would have failed the truth if I had ended my talk affirming that things were going to change in the foreseeable future. I honestly couldn't see any signs that would announce a positive change, rather the opposite: the powers of death in my country were dominating with such force, that they have every possibility of progressively consolidating their domination.

That night among the group of Zaragozan attendees surged a very emotive debate about hope that left me with profound questions.

It is true that hope, before the stark reality that is imposed upon us, has an audacious and rebellious aspect. It is true that hope can't maintain itself from lectures, based on academic precision, that only permit us to access what already is, and not what should be. But it is also true that a hope that underestimates the elements that inform reality, or tries to ignore or evade them through discourses that refer to nonexistent worlds, is a hope that could be considered an opiate o somnifacient, that allows us more easily to tolerate the ignanamous real, covering it with a cloak of unreal dreams.

Many paradigms of hope, as much in the theological world, centered on salvation, as in the political world, centered on revolution, have enclosed hope in ideological borders with strong doses of resignation and passive hope.

I believe that, at least in progressive christians circles, hope is no longer characterized as a passive attitude, what once in the past was considered a "Christian" virtue of resignation.

Erich Fromm, in a work titled Revolution of Hope, has beautifully expressed his way of understanding hope in these terms:

"Having hope means being attentive in every moment to that which still isn't born, but without losing hope if the birth doesn't occur in the passing of our lives. It doesn't make sense to hope in what already exists and not in what could be. Those whose hope is weak fight for comfortableness or through violence, while those whose hope is strong see and help along all the signals of a new life and are prepared in each moment to help the advent of that which is found in a state of birth."1

For Erich Fromm, hope is an aspect in the vital structure of being human, but it is linked to another fundamental of this vital structure, which is faith. And Fromm describes faith, in the same chapter, as "the knowledge of the real possibility, the awareness of a gestation. Faith is rational when it refers to the knowledge of the real that still hasn«t been born, and it bases itself on that ability to know and to capture what penetrates the surface and see the nucleus. Faith, the same as hope, isn«t to predict the future, but instead is the vision of the present in a state of gestation." (ibid.)

But the former, according to Fromm, is what most characterizes hope and faith, that is, that strength to see the real that hasn't birthed but is incubating; that strength to comprehend the "lines of force" ("all that influences reality", sp: l'neas de fuerza) that is configuring reality that is in incubation, is at the same time that which explains the CRISIS OF OUR HOPE.

Many cast their gaze on the positive in this new world that has been gestating and being born in modernity: they admire scientific advances, its power to dominate material and the marvelous gains in the area of communications, but others of us cast our gaze on the human costs that this has had and we're not able to look with any joy nor enthusiasm at these wonders. How not to recognize that this wonderful world of modernity has been giving birth to a "hell" for at least 60% of all human beings? And I speak of "hell" remembering Dante's Divine Comedy, where the inscription on the door to hell was almost the same as the loss of hope: "those who enter here, abandon all hope".

I would like to have the ability of shorter sight to be able to store-up some doses of optimism, but each time I try to examine the "lines of force" that are incubating and see that at the moment of birth, our dreams progressively begin to collapse, I find myself unable to make out the image of a present in a state of positive and satisfying incubation.

Mi ideological identity was forged principally in the 60s, when I carried out university studies in philosophy and at the same time opted for the religious life. Together with many other colleagues and friends, Jesuits and non-Jesuits, religious and lay-persons, believers and nonbelievers, we lived a fascination of discovery that the world, and above all that our continent and our country could be different. In those years Latin America was a clamor of political and theological ideas that impatiently searched to incarnate themselves in reality through activist movements. Liberation was the magic word that awakened all interests, political as much as theological. Testimonies like that of Camilo Torres or the Bishop Gerardo Valencia shook and destabilized the status quo, but in almost all countries, from Mexico to Central America to the Southern Cone, arose prophets and movements that invited action. Theorists produced research and analysis that clearly revealed such unjust structures that obvious that those who had an upright conscience would commit themselves to a revolutionary process of change. The popular armies that sprung-up all over seemed to announce those nucleus' of resistance that would make the burning desire of the poor masses invincible before the pathological repression of the powerful. Despite the fragility of everything that rises from the marginalized sectors, it seemed that hope began to invade many fields that before were cooped by the fatalism of injustice.

The 70s were years of martyrdom. Latin America began to fill with dictatorships characterized by "national security". Their power was exercised in almost all places by the military caste that embodied the brutality. The dimensions of the barbarity seemed to reveal that the unjust powers were unmasking their true face, irrational and inhumane, which would inevitably lead to their ilegitimization and their downfall, and that the revolutionary movement was being refined by the suffering and the martyrdom in order to fulfill once more the prophetic sign of the first Christians: "the blood of the martyrs are seeds of Christians". We also believed that the testimony of blood was the planting of a victory much more assertive, given its incontrovertible ethical proportions.

In Colombia there were no military dictatorships in the 70s nor in the 80s, but the repressive strategies of our government, reinforced by the cunning policy of preserving all the formalities of democracy, adjusted to the same principles of the dictatorships in order to "legitimize" repression. Under such policy, it made it seem like a "defense of democracy". Despite the barbarity, flooded by blood and the pain of the continent, I would say that this stage never saw a loss of hope. There was a certain understanding that a dark night was passing that would undoubtedly advance to a new dawn.

As the decade of the 80s advanced, the dictatorships one by one were ceding to a Governmental model that was called, without modesty, "restricted democracy", designed by the technocrats and ideologues of the "Trilateral" alliance which united the colosals of world capitalism: the USA, Western Europe and Japan. There was a realignment in what remained of the popular movements that emerged anemic from the night of the dictatorships, and they began to redesign their strategies in order to take advantage of the small "democratic" spaces that those regimes offered, whose discourse was never lacking in criticisms of the dictatorial repression. The language of human rights, as a legitimized language by the greater global forum of powers, such as the United Nations, began to frame itself as an alternative that would channel the dynamism of the popular movements that demanded justice, or as an alternative that, once submitting itself to the rules and procedures of Law, that would distance the fears of revolutionary violence as a strategy of structural change.

The last few years of the 80s and the first years of the 90s could be characterized as the expansion of the discourse of human rights. It was believed that the horrible memory of the brutality of the dictatorships was sufficiently strong to fuel the movement against impunity that would forever exorcize the barbarity and would consolidate respect for the Law, such that progressively it would be possible to restore rights consecrated by the international community as human rights, including civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights.

Nevertheless, two phenomena became firmly established at the beginning of the 90s that would frustrate these hopes: on the one hand, the definitive crisis of socialism, with its central effect being the consolidation of a unipolar imperialist world; on the other, the progressive globalization of the world's economy, that began to make the States and governmental powers merely symbols, given that the real power began to shift towards multinational corporations and transnational capital.

A new cycle of violence is becoming comprehendible, but now it doesn't emerge articulated in concrete projects. The massive negation of economic, social and cultural rights of whole peoples and great strata in almost all societies, provokes violent protests and in turn provokes even more violent forms of repression. The advance of terrorism is felt, and it reveals very worrisome levels of hopelessness.

We are no longer in other decades in which at least there were alternative paradigms of social organization, even if they were full of defects. The corruption of socialist models leave profound waves of disillusionment and hopelessness. But what most feeds the hopelessness is the fatality that is affirmed more each day, that this complex reality that we call "the world", as a product of an articulation of the "lines of force" that dominate its nucleus and, it seems, will dominate for very prolonged lengths of time to come, is fatally condemned to maintain only a small fringe of human beings that live in acceptable conditions, while finding ways to put aside the great majority who must remain excluded from economic and human development via "democratic" rules of the market.

In years past we read shudderingly those novels that Erich Fromm characterized as "negative utopias", such as George Orwell's "1984", o Aldous Huxley's "A Brave New World". These showed us, through fiction, how a system could program humans so that they would assimilate and adapt themselves to it, exterminating values that we believed were the most profoundly human. But today, many of the same mechanisms that the Colombian State, always with the advisement of the USA, remind me quite realistically of the horrors of these negative utopias.

When torture, practiced by agents of the State became a general practice in Colombia in 1979, an ever growing number of Colombians began to join the movement for the defense and promotion of human rights. We found in the encounter between domestic law and international law a possible via to defend fundamental human values that before we had wanted to defend more through social and political movements that were demonized by the Establishment. I had to begin to submerge myself in judicial studies, at that time foreign to me, and my hope was imbued, to a great degree, in legal struggles. I can't deny that we had some success: we succeeded in getting the Colombian State to sign many international human rights treaties; we managed to modify many legal procedures; we succeeded in creating official posts related to the protection of human rights; we got international organizations to exercise pressure on the government whose aim was to protect numerous victims, and an important moment was the change in the National Constitution in 1991, whose text incorporated the majority of international human rights treaties.

But at the same time as this world of legal formality was transforming, the daily and brutal reality of human rights violations was increasing and the hope that had been placed in legality began to fall in on itself. For me, the decade of the 90s, in which I acted as Executive Secretary of the Commission for Justice and Peace, and as such had to file the denouncement of thousands of crimes against humanity before the judicial powers of the State, set up a face to face meeting with legal fiction. I began to discover how impunity fed on double discourses and intelligently designed strategies so that the formal wouldn't effect the real. For that reason, in the last years of my service with the Commission for Justice and Peace, I preferred to denounce the same judicial system as an obstacle, instead of a helpful resource that would protect human dignity.

In Colombia since the middle of the 60s, there has existed the war alternative, the violent solution to social conflict, represented by guerrilla groups born of the poor and the opposed, that despite brutal repression haven't been extinguished but rather have grown. The hope that can incarnate in armed conflict is a fragile hope. All wars bring enormous evils, and much more through a war between incredibly unequal forces. For that reason, since twenty years ago peace movements have also existed in Colombia, in which hope is found in a political and not a military solution to the armed conflict, but they are movements that in these 20 years have only produced frustration and a loss of hope. Despite that many discourses accept that an urgent change in economic, social and political structures is needed to remove the justification of war, real negotiations only look to preserve the status quo.

In the last couple of years the war has become acute and has produced profound societal trauma and destruction. Also, the kind of war we live deeply destroys hope. It isn't easy to understand the logic of this war, given that the predominant perspective is that of the Establishment, owners of the mass media of "information". The international community has channeled its peace efforts towards Colombia in two central slogans: convince the two poles that a negotiated political solution is necessary instead of a military one, and urging the application of International Humanitarian Law. These two rallying cries, that seem so just in theory, when applied to solid terrain break apart because the mediators refuse to understand that a war between enormously unequal armies can't submit to the humanitarian norms of war as might relatively equal armed forces. In other words, as in the majority of wars, on the one hand a deep conflict between logic and effectiveness is revealed, and on the other, the conflict between ethics and rules.

But what makes the problem of the war in Colombia more insolvable is that the State, under the instruction of the United States, created in the 60s an instrument in order to degrade the war without measure. Such is the paramilitary strategy, that involves corps of armed civilians that act as the hidden arm of the official army, designed in order to pass through the judicial and ethical barriers of war whose end is to guarantee its effectiveness. This instrument's logic necessarily means that the civilian population is more and more involved in the war and that methods of terror increasingly dominate the development of the war. And what makes this kind of conflict still more insolvable, is that that same logic obliges the creation of fictitious languages in which the State has to play a role of "independent actor" towards paramilitarism in order to legitimize itself before the international community, and that the Colombian State, immersed in a deeply rooted schizophrenia, has played this role majestically.

When our hope has been based on truth; when we have concentrated our efforts in putting our difficult reality before our compatriots and the international community, with the expectation that a single, honest, striped-down look of what is happening will awaken genuine human sensitivity in order to oppose injustice, then we find ourselves face to face with another one of the "lines of force" that characterize this modern world we are immersed in: the manipulating power of the mass media, that in league with the great conglomerates of capital, hide and select, twist and manipulate, demonize and sanctify, according to occult interests. It has even come to the point of presenting the victims of their lies, those who have died by desperate violence, as "martyrs of truth".

When our hope has been based on autonomy and we have naively dreamed that the term "cold war" would have done away with the blueprint of hemispheric blocks of power and that the US would no longer have such fear of ideological infiltration of an enemy power in its "back yard", and therefore ending the blockade of our efforts for self-determination and the search of a greater social justice, this hope also came tumbling down. When the phantom of "Communism" disappeared, the US rapidly designed a new pretext: the War on Drugs, in order to closely control all movement of social transformation. And despite having put together a discourse about the War on Drugs full of incoherence and lies, the international community has believed and supported it. "Plan Colombia" is a political and military intervention project that is supported by this discourse full of falsehoods.

Before the defeat of all these manifestations of hope it is logical that one would find oneself with many manifestations of hopelessness.

I can't seem to forget a shared reflection with a group of mothers of the disappeared in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when from a balcony we observed an electoral campaign march in the context in which all the candidates were from the right-wing. In that moment we perceived concretely one of the most terrible effects of the Argentinean dictatorship: the ideology elimination of an entire generation and through terror, conditioning the political options for the following generation, perhaps on levels predominately subconscious. It was compelling to recognize there the success of barbarity and its power to design the future.

In Colombia I constantly find myself with old activists who, after greeting one another, can only sustain scarce minutes in conversation, for fear of talking about there actual involvement in the dominate system. There are occasions in which the topic painfully comes up, almost with cathartic necessity, and then the existential dilemma begins to appear that secretly tortures them: they are between ruining their lives, subjecting themselves to permanent risk of open or hidden persecution, in the midst of hopes that always get torn down. That or they try to live with a minimum of peace, and in this way silencing their values that earlier they had believed with the deepest of convictions. Many times has this been expressed as a tribute to "realism" and to "prudence", recognizing that the world is dominated by powers opposed to justice and reason.

I have also found many opposite cases: those that consciously ruin their lives; they subject themselves to the most extreme of risks; they renounce all social and family stability, and take on commitments that they are sure will carry them to death within a short time. In many cases they do it without hope; with the assurance that their struggle and the offering of their lives will not change the situation in any way, because the powers against them are monstrously superior, but they feel that the only way to be faithful to themselves is by destroy themselves, announcing a great "NO" before this unacceptable world, and trying to destroy what they can of that world before they die. Here is explained one of the current forms of terrorism, almost the only one our society perceives and points out with an accusing finger, given that State terrorism is nearly undetected in the world of public opinion.

These existential realities are having a lot influence today in the development of the war in Colombia. In some intellectual circles a debate is happening about whether it is ethical, or not, to commit oneself to a war that cannot be won, although being supported with just reasons. Some, invoke the "ethic of responsibility" as defined by Max Weber, affirming that it isn't just to support a war that only brings with it destruction and suffering but doesn't provide any possibility of success. Others, appealing to the "the ethic of conviction" also defined by Max Weber, affirm that hope in success can't be a fundamental criteria for participation in war, rather, in the intrinsic justice of the cause. In all wars a profound conflict ensues between effectiveness and ethics, between the means and the ends. But here very radical challenges are contemplated in the way we take on hope. It seems that hope is linked in some way to the possibility of success or in a future reward.

Many ask if the absence of hope of success leaves no other exit than to accept the present situation as an ethical imperative, when an attempt to change it would only contribute failures accompanied by suffering. And unfortunately that absence of hope of success is less and less apparent, given the instruments that reenforce it are more and more powerful in reenforcing the status quo.

I have asked myself many times if the scarce incarnations of hope are linked too much and conditioned by the factor of success and reward.

Christian theology's hope has been constructed during many centuries, the final end of the individual's historical existence being rounded up by success and reward; filling Heaven with a great richness that will come after death, whose rewards are presented as inversely proportional to the suffering and want of earthly existence.

Just as the former, political ideology's hope is affirmed in an identical blueprint. The same sequence of suffering / reward is affirmed, although in secularized language, and perhaps that ideological necessity of consolidating the secular heaven image of triumphant revolutions, that success and reward makes real for those that invested in suffering and risks, is what most corrupts the triumphant revolution and converts them in a mechanism for reproducing injustices against which before they rebelled against.

But I have asked myself how we can unlink hope from the factor of success and reward that act as its impelling dynamic. At times, each of these hope crisis oblige us to return to the Gospel from other perspectives and discover in it unexpected dimensions.

Many theologians, during many centuries, have drawn Jesus preaching a "Kingdom of the Heavens" full of paternal reward, to which access is gained after death. Other more modern theologians have drawn him as announcing a "Kingdom of God" as a social and historical utopia, to which access is gained when communally taking on the values that are generally discovered in the spontaneous and genuine values in the hearts of human beings and when historical conventions, produced through selfishness, are torn down. A contemporary current of theologians have opted for the starting point, hardly classical, which is the possible historical reconstruction of Jesus of Nazareth as a first century Jewish peasant, submerged in the physicalness of his historical moment and humanly reacting to it, setting aside his divinity until being able to reconstruct it as a "reading of meaning" (sp: lectura de sentido) elaborated by those who took on his values, and in this way providing a shield before all dehumanizing rule.

In this last current there are readings that challenge and destabilize our classical comprehension of hope. The accounts of the death of Jesus, reinserted in the physicalness of his historic moment, present his death as a categorical failure, about whose darkness is constructed, perhaps in a couple of decades, the profound theology of resurrection. And the narrative climax of this failure is reconsidered in the first verse of Psalm 22 that for many has a scandalous effect to the point of blasphemy: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?". In this theology, there is no response from God that penetrates the historical physicalness of the failure in order to transform or soften the cruel realism of failure. The divine replies will be elaborated on another level, that of faith, and the dynamism that feeds on those replies will never be lost, that which strives to penetrate the dark face of failure. Some of these readings dare to point out that Jesus preferred to die leaving on record a painful existential absence of God, instead of betraying the values for which he lived his life, those values that carried him, without doubt, to the disturbing failure of the cross.

This theology retreats from an image of hope fatally linked to success and reward, and makes it necessary to elaborate an understanding of hope related more with failure. And there is no doubt that such an understanding of hope will also demand the death of many images of God; images tied to the existential logic of success and reward.

I would dare to characterize this reconfiguration of hope as an existential adherence to self-valid values, that is, to utopias or projects that don't extract their value from guaranties, or their future projections, or from the promise of intrinsic success or reward that they carry with them. Rather, they are valid through themselves and have an intrinsically gratifying power that can live together perfectly well with failure without destroying themselves.

I don't ignore that this understanding doesn't fit in our western culture. In our culture the human being, as Erich Fromm points out in The Art of Love, "experiences its vital energy as an investment from which must be obtained the maximum payoff, taking into account its position and the situation of the market (...) Its principle end is the advantageous trading of its skillfulness, of its knowledge, and of itself as "equipment" of personality".2 All of our education, recreation, economic, social and academic structures and institutions are based on the centrality of success, as an efficient means and end of vital energy, from which religion isn't exempt: Fromm adds: "the belief in God has converted into a psychological resource whose end is to make the individual more apt for the competitive fight" (ibid.) There is no doubt that Christianity has deeply converted, during centuries, to this cultural model and for this we would have to do ourselves too much violence in order to separate hope from this success that has been our nourishment.

Hope that can live together with failure, not just a few might say, would convert into a melancholic hope, stripping it of joy and enthusiasm that have been considered its accompanying melody. There is no other solution than to accept this verdict that nevertheless remains trapped in our cultural model of a joy and enthusiasm also profoundly amalgamated with success.

A countercultural Christianity, as I believe would be more genuine, would have to drink more from the subterranean cultural patterns of the excluded, almost always encrypted below mistaken cultural coverings, that permit them to survive underneath the dominant culture, but that aim to counter-values that barely begin to appear below the strong layers of censorship. I have asked myself, for example, why does violent death result in such ritual and ceremonial heaviness, despite having to coat it with so many negative cultural symbols that make it acceptable among dominant cultural patterns. We have never succeeded in making the celebration of Easter compete with the ceremonial density of Holy Friday, despite that Easter exuberantly ritualizes a sublime success that tries to stump the nightmarish failure of Holy Friday. What ceremony could beat the tragic enthusiasm of the funerals of Palestinian suicide bombers?

There are joys that are dressed as sadness. There is inspiration that is dressed as tragedy. It isn't easy to subvert mental structures configured by the centrality of success.

In this festive denseness of tragedy something seems to be hiding that can't in any way express itself in dominant culture, and it is the profound conviction that it is preferable to suffer injustice that to participate in injustice, although in dominant culture the former may have all the negative connotations of failure and the later may be associated with all its successes and joys.

This conviction is expressed by the Chech marxist writer, Milan Machovec, in his beautiful book "Jesus for Atheists". There he affirms that "an atheist that seriously takes on, even until death, life and the effort through the movement that loves, without cynicism and without opportunistic reserve, may well admit that the moment in which Peter discovered that Jesus was still victorious, although only having preceded an inconsolable and stark death on the cross, has been one of the greatest moments of humanity and history".3

But to discover this, it is necessary to be aware that the majority of joys, successes and triumphs in our dominant culture are associated with injustice, and that the construction of justice is ordinarily associated with failure and suffering, despite possessing the maximum of gratifying power of a countercultural Gospel.

I only want to point out with this last reference that the pools where counterculture drinks are deep pools, and it isn't easy to submerge oneself in those caverns.

Javier Giraldo M., S.J.
Pozzuolo dei Friuli, Zugliano
Udine, Italy
September, 2002
Speech given at the Hope Forum, organized by the Centro de Acogida "Ernesto Balducci", for the 10 year anniversary of the death of Father Ernesto Balducci.

Riconfigurare la speranza in un contesto di perdita della speranza

Javier Giraldo M. , S.J. — 2006-01-17T23:55:02Z

Molti anni fa, quando esposi la situazione del mio Paese di fronte ad un pubblico in maggioranza cristiano a Saragozza, in Spagna, al termine una signora protestó, molto alterata, perché avevo lasciato nel pubblico la sensazione che non c'era rimedio e che la situazione avrebbe continuato a peggiorare. Secondo lei sarei venuto meno al mio dovere di fare un'analisi della situazione secondo l'ottica della speranza cristiana e di lasciare negli ascoltatori una sensazione di speranza.

Le risposi che avrei fatto torto alla veritá se avessi terminato la mia esposizione affermando che le cose sarebbero cambiate in un tempo prevedibile. Onestamente non vedevo nessun segno che annunciasse un cambio positivo, tutto al contrario: i poteri di morte che stavano dominando nel mio Paese mostravano una forza tale, che avevano tutte le possibilitá di consolidare progressivamente il proprio dominio.

In quel gruppo di spettatori di Saragozza si levó quella notte un dibattito appassionato sulla speranza, che mi lasció profondi interrogativi.

E' certo che la speranza possiede un elemento di audacia e di ribellione verso ció che la cruda realtá cerca di imporci. E' certo inoltre che la speranza non puó alimentarsi di analisi su ció che giá esiste, fatte con strumenti di scienza, che ci permettono solo di accedere a ció che é, e non a ció che deve essere. Peró é anche certo che una speranza che cerchi di sottovalutare i condizionamenti della realtá, di ignorarli o di eluderli mediante discorsi riferiti a mondi inesistenti, é una speranza che potrebbe qualificarsi come oppio o sonnifero, che ci porta a tollerare facilmente la ignominia reale, coprendola con un manto di sogni irreali.

Molti paradigmi della speranza, tanto nel mondo del teologico - incentrati nella salvazione - quanto nel mondo del politico - incentrati nella rivoluzione - hanno rinchiuso la speranza in frontiere ideologiche con forti dosi di rassegnazione e di passiva attesa.

Credo che almeno nei settori cristiano progressisti non si caratterizzino piú come speranza le attitudini passive, cosa che in passato fu considarata come la virtú “cristiana” della rassegnazione.

Erich Fromm, in uno scritto che intitoló La Rivoluzione della Speranza, ha espresso bene la sua maniera di concepire la speranza in questi termini:

“Avere speranza significa essere preparati in qualsiasi momento a ció che ancora non nasce, peró senza arrivare a disperarsi se la nascita non avviene nel corso della nostra vita. Pertanto non ha senso aspettare ció che giá esiste o ció che non puó essere. Coloro la cui speranza é debole lottano per le comoditá o per la violenza, mentre coloro la cui speranza é forte riconoscono e fomentano tutti i segni della nuova vita e stanno pronti in tutti i momenti per aiutare l'avvento di ció che si trova in condizioni di nascere.”

Per Erich Fromm la speranza é un elemento della struttura vitale dell'essere umano, peró é legata ad un altro elemento fondamentale di questa struttura vitale, che é la fede. E Fromm, nello stesso capitolo, descrive la fede come “la conoscenza della possibilitá reale, la coscienza della gestazione. La fede é razionale quando si riferisce alla conoscenza del reale che ancora non nasce, e si fonda su quella facoltá di conoscere e di apprendere che penetra la superficie delle cose e ne vede l'essenza. La fede, allo stesso modo che la speranza, non é predire il futuro, bensí la visione del presente in stato di gestazione.” (ibid.)

Peró ció che, secondo Fromm, é piú caratteristico della speranza e della fede, ossia lo sforzo per vedere il reale che non é nato peró che é in gestazione; quello sforzo per comprendere le linee di forza che stanno configurando la realtá che é in gestazione, é allo stesso tempo ció che spiega la CRISI DELLA NOSTRA SPERANZA.

Molti concentrano lo sguardo sull'aspetto positivo di questo nuovo mondo che é venuto nascendo nella modernitá: ammirano i progressi della scienza, il suo potere di dominio sulla materia e le meraviglie ottenute nel campo delle comunicazioni, peró noi concentriamo lo sguardo sui costi umani che tutto questo ha causato e non possiamo contemplare con nessuna allegria né entusiasmo quelle meraviglie. Come non riconoscere che questo mondo meraviglioso della modernitá ha dato alla luce un “inferno” per al meno il 60% dell'umanitá? E parlo di “inferno” ricordando che nella Divina Commedia di Dante l'iscrizione incisa sulla porta dell'inferno lo rendeva quasi equivalente alla perdita della speranza: “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi che entrate.”

Vorrei avere una capacitá di osservazione piú limitata per poter albergare alcune dosi di ottimismo, peró ogni volta che cerco di esaminare le linee di forza di ció che é in gestazione e che al nascere distrugge progressivamente i nostri sogni, mi vedo sempre piú incapace di elaborare l'immagine di un presente in stato di gestazione positiva e gratificante.

La mia identitá ideologica si forma principalmente negli anni '60, quando realizzo i miei studi universitari di filosofia e allo stesso tempo opto per la vita religiosa. Insieme a molti altri compagni ed amici, gesuiti e non gesuiti, religiosi e laici, credenti e non credenti, viviamo il fascino della scoperta che il mondo, e soprattutto il nostro continente e il nostro Paese, potevano essere diversi. L'America Latina in quegli anni era un fermento di idee politiche e teologiche che cercavano affannosamente di incarnarsi nella realtá attraverso movimenti militanti. Liberazione era la parola magica che risvegliava tutti gli entusiasmi, tanto nel politico quanto nel teologico. Testimonianze come quella di Camilo Torres o del Vescovo Gerardo Valencia commuovevano e destabilizzavano lo status quo, peró in quasi tutti i Paesi, dal Messico e Centro America fino al Cono Sud, sorgevano profeti e movimenti che invitavano all'azione. I teorici producevano analisi tanto evidenti delle strutture dell'ingiustizia che era difficile dubitare che coloro che avessero una coscienza retta si avventurerebbero in un processo di cambio rivoluzionario. Gli eserciti popolari che sorgevano dovunque sembravano annunciare quei nuclei di resistenza que renderebbero invincibili le ansie delle masse impoverite davanti alla repressione patologica dei potenti. Nonostante la fragilitá di tutto ció che nasce dagli esclusi, sembrava che la speranza cominciasse a invadere molti campi anteriormente occupati dalla fatalitá dell'ingiustizia.

Gli anni '70 furono gli anni del martirio. L'America Latina si riempí di dittature che si definivano di “sicurezza nazionale”. Il potere fu esercitato in quasi tutte le parti dalla casta militare che incarnava la brutalitá. Le dimensioni della barbarie sembravano rivelare che i poteri ingiusti stavano smascherando il suo autentico volto, irrazionale e inumano, che porterebbe irrimediabilmente alla sua delegittimazione e al suo crollo, e che il movimento rivoluzionario si stava valorando nel soffrimento e nel martirio per rendere reale una volta di piú la consegna dei primi cristiani: “il sangue dei martiri é seme di cristiani.” Anche allora credevamo que la testimonianza del sangue fosse la semina di una vittoria molto piú contundente, grazie alla sua dimensione etica incontrovertibile.

In Colombia non ci sono state dittature militari negli anni '70 e '80, peró le strategie repressive dei nostri governi si sono adeguate ai medesimi principi delle dittature, rafforzati dall'astuzia di preservare tutte le formalitá della democrazia, per “legittimare” la repressione con un discorso che la faceva apparire come “difesa della democrazia.”

Nonostante la barbarie, che inondó di sangue e dolore il continente, io direi che questa tappa non si é vissuta nella mancanza di speranza. Esisteva una certa coscienza che si stesse attraversando una notte oscura che stava inevitabilmente avanzando verso l'alba.

A misura che avanzava la decade degli '80, le dittature lasciarono il posto ad un modello de Stato che si chiamó, senza pudore, “di democrazia ristretta”, disegnato dai tecnocrati e ideologi della alleanza “Trilaterale”, che riuniva i colossi del capitalismo mondiale: Stati Uniti, Europa occidentale e Giappone. Ci fu un riallineamento di molti rimasugli di movimenti popolari che uscivano anemici dalla lunga notte delle dittature e che cominciavano a ridisegnare le proprie strategie per sfruttare i piccoli spazi “democratici” che offrivano quei regimi, nei cui discorsi non mancavano le critiche alla repressione dittatoriale. Il linguaggio dei diritti umani, come un linguaggio legittimato dal foro mondiale piú ampio di poteri che é quello delle Nazioni Unite, cominció a profilarsi come un'alternativa per canalizzare i dinamismi dei movimenti popolari che esigevano giustizia, o come un'alternativa che, nel sottomettersi alle regole e ai procedimenti del Diritto, allontanava i timori della violenza rivoluzionaria come strategia di cambio di strutture.

Gli ultimi anni della decade degli '80 e i primi della decade dei '90 potrebbero caratterizzarsi come l'espansione del discorso dei diritti umani. Si pensó che la memoria negativa della brutalitá delle dittature era sufficientemente forte per alimentare un movimento contro l'impunitá che esorcizzasse per sempre la barbarie e che consolidasse il rispetto per il Diritto, di modo che progressivamente si potessero rivendicare i diritti consacrati dalla comunitá internazionale come diritti umani, includendo i diritti civili, politici, economici, sociali e culturali.

Tuttavia, due fenomeni che si affermarono con forza all'inizio degli anni '90 porteranno alla frustrazione tutte quelle speranza: da una parte, la crisi definitiva del socialismo reale, col suo effetto centrale di consolidare un mondo unipolare imperialista; dall'altra, la globalizzazione progressiva dell'economia mondiale, che rese meramente simbolici i poteri di Stati e governi, poiché il potere reale si insedió nelle imprese multinazionali e nel capitale transnazionale.

Un nuovo ciclo di violenza torna ad essere comprensibile, peró non appare piú articolato in progetti concreti. La negazione massiva dei diritti economici, sociali e culturali di popoli interi e di porzioni molto estese di quasi tutte le societá, provoca violente proteste che portano a forme di repressione ancora piú violente. Si percepisce l'avanzata del terrorismo, che rivela livelli molto preoccupanti di disperazione.

Non ci troviamo piú nelle decadi precedenti, quando per lo meno esistevano paradigmi alternativi di organizzazione sociale, anche se pieni di difetti. La stessa corruzione dei modelli socialisti lascia profonde ondate di desincanto e di perdita di speranza. Peró ció che piú alimenta la perdita di speranza é la fatalitá che ogni giorno si afferma di piú, che questa complessa realtá che chiamiamo mondo, come prodotto di un'articolazione di linee di forza che dominano il suo fondamento e che sembra lo domineranno per tempi molto lunghi, é fatalmente condannata a mantenere solo una piccola fascia di esseri umani che vivono in condizioni accettabili, mentre cerca la maniera di disfarsi delle grandi maggioranze, che devono restare escluse dal consumo e dallo sviluppo umano mediante le regole “democratiche” del mercato.

Negli anni passati abbiamo letto con commozione quel romanzo che Erich Fromm caratterizzó come “utopie negative”, come quella di George Orwell intitolata “Mille Novecento Ottanta Quattro”, o quella di Aldous Huxley intitolata “Un Mondo Felice”. Queste ci presentavano, nel campo della finzione, come un sistema potesse programmare gli esseri umani perché lo assimilassero e si adattassero allo stesso, sterminando valori che credevamo fossero i piú profondamente umani. Peró oggi molti dei meccanismi utilizzati dallo Stato colombiano, sempre col patrocinio degli Stati Uniti, mi ricordano con molto realismo gli orrori di queste utopie negative.

Quando la tortura, praticata da agenti dello Stato, si generalizzó in Colombia nel 1979, con un gruppo ogni volta piú numeroso di colombiani ingrossammo il movimento di difesa e promozione dei diritti umani. Trovammo nella confrontazione tra il diritto interno e il diritto internazionale una via possibile per difendere i valori umani fondamentali che prima avevamo voluto difendere appoggiati piú a movimenti sociali e politici, che furono demonizzati radicalmente dall'Istituzione. Dovetti cominciare a sommergermi in discipline giuridiche che fino ad allora mi erano estranee, e la mia speranza si rivestí, in dimensioni non disprezzabili, di lotta giuridica. Non posso negare che ottenemmo qualche successo: ottenemmo che lo Stato colombiano firmasse molti trattati internazionali di diritto umano; modificare molti processi giudiziali; creare molti incarichi ufficiali relazionati con la protezione dei diritti umani; che organi internazionali esercitassero pressioni sul governo con lo scopo di proteggere molte vittime, e un momento importante fu il cambio della Costituzione Nazionale nel 1991, poiché incorporó nel suo testo la maggioranza dei trattati internazionali di diritto umano.

Peró a misura che tutto questo mondo delle formalitá legali si andava trasformando, la realtá della violazione quotidiana e brutale dei diritti umani andava aumentando e distruggendo tutte le speranze che si erano rivestite di giuridicitá. Per me la decade dei '90, durante la quale mi disimpegnai come Segretario Esecutivo della Commissione di Giustizia e Pace, e come tale dovetti inoltrare la denuncia di migliaia di crimini di lesa umanitá innanzi ai poteri giudiziari dello Stato, costituí un incontro faccia a faccia con la finzione giuridica. Scoprii come l'impunitá si alimentasse di discorsi doppi e di strategie astutamente disegnate in maniera che la forma non scalfisse la realtá. Per questo negli ultimi anni di servizio nella Commissione di Giustizia e Pace preferii denunciare la stessa Giustizia piú come un ostacolo, che come un aiuto per proteggere la dignitá umana.

In Colombia é esistita, a partire dalla metá della decade dei '60, l'alternativa della guerra, della soluzione violenta del conflitto sociale, rappresentata da gruppi guerriglieri nati dagli scontenti e dai poveri, che nonostante la brutalitá della repressione non si sono estinti, anzi, sono cresciuti. La speranza che puó incarnarsi in un conflitto armato é una speranza molto fragile. Tutte le guerre portano mali enormi, e molto piú una guerra tra forze enormemente disuguali. Per questo da 20 anni anche in Colombia esistono movimenti per la pace, nei quali la speranza si riveste di una soluzione politica e non militare del conflitto armato, peró sono movimenti che in questi 20 anni hanno raccolto solo frustrazioni e perdita della speranza. Nonostante in molti discorsi si accetti la necessitá di un cambio urgente delle strutture economiche, sociali e politiche perché scompaia la giustificazione della guerra, nelle negoziazioni reali si cerca solamente che lo status quo si preservi intatto.

Negli ultimi anni la guerra si é acutizzata di molto ed é arrivata a produrre distruzioni e traumi molto profondi nella societá. Anche la modalitá della guerra che viviamo distrugge profondamente la speranza. Non é facile intendere la logica di questa guerra, perché l'analisi predominante é quella che fa l'Istituzione, padrona dei mezzi di “informazione” di massa. La comunitá internazionale ha canalizzato i suoi sforzi di pace verso la Colombia attraverso due consegne centrali: convincere i due poli della necessitá di una soluzione politica negoziata, al posto di una soluzione militare del conflitto, e pressare per l'applicazione del Diritto Internazionale Umanitario. Queste due consegne, che si considerano tanto giuste nella loro formulazione astratta, quando si applicano in concreto si parzializzano, perché i mediatori non vogliono capire le crude realtá che hanno motivato la guerra e perché non vogliono capire che una guerra tra forze enormemente disuguali non puó sottomettersi alle stesse norme umanitarie delle guerre tra forze relativamente equilibrate. In altre parole, come nella maggioranza delle guerre, si rivela allo stesso tempo un profondo conflitto tra la logica dell'efficacia, da un lato, e dell'etica e il diritto, dall'altra.

Peró ció che rende meno risolvibile il problema della guerra in Colombia é che lo Stato, patrocinato dai governi degli Stati Uniti, ha creato a partire dagli anni '60 uno strumento per degradare la guerra senza misura, come la strategia paramilitare, che implica corpi di civili armati che agiscono come il braccio clandestino dell'esercito ufficiale, concepiti per trapassare tutte le barriere giuridiche ed etiche della guerra col fine di garantire la sua efficacia. La logica di questo strumento comporta necessariamente che la popolazione civile sia sempre piú coinvolta nella guerra e che metodi di terrore dominino ogni volta di piú lo sviluppo della guerra. E ció che rende meno risolvibile un tale conflitto, é che questa stessa logica obbliga a creare linguaggi fittizi in cui lo Stato deve far giocare il ruolo di “attore indipendente” al paramilitarismo per potersi legittimare di fronte alla comunitá internazionale, e lo Stato colombiano, immerso in una schizofrenia inveterata, ha giocato magistralmente questo ruolo.

Quando la nostra speranza si é rivestita di veritá; quando abbiamo concentrato i nostri sforzi per mettere al meno la nostra cruda realtá davanti agli occhi dei nostri compatrioti e della comunitá internazionale, con la fiducia che la sola scarna visione di quello che succede risveglierá i sentimenti e i dinamismi piú genuinamente umani per opponersi all'ingiustizia, allora ci incontriamo faccia a faccia con un'altra delle linee di forza che caratterizza questo mondo moderno in cui siamo immersi: il potere manipolatore dei mass media, che legato com'é ai grandi conglomerati del capitale, occulta e seleziona, tergiversa e manipola, demonizza e sacralizza, d'accordo con interessi inconfessabili. Si é arrivati perfino all'estremo di esibire come “martiri della veritá” coloro che morirono sotto la violenza disperata delle vittime delle loro menzogne.

Quando la nostra speranza si é rivestita di autonomia e abbiamo sognato ingenuamente che con la fine della “guerra fredda” sarebbe scomparso lo schema dei blocchi emisferici di potere e che gli Stati Uniti non avrebbero piú tanto timore dell'infiltrazione ideologica di una potenza nemica nel suo “giardino dietro casa”, smettendo, pertanto, di bloccare i nostri sforzi di autodeterminazione e di ricerca di una maggiore giustizia sociale, anche questa speranza crolló. Quando scomparve il fantasma del “Comunismo”, rapidamente gli Stati Uniti inventarono un nuovo pretesto: il narcotraffico, per controllare da vicino tutti i movimenti di trasformazione sociale. E nonostante abbiano montato un discorso sopra il narcotraffico pieno di incoerenze e di menzogne, la comunitá internazionale gli ha creduto e lo ha appoggiato. Il “Plan Colombia” é un progetto di intervenzione politica e militare che si appoggia su questo discorso fieno di falsitá.

Di fronte a questo crollo dei rivestimenti della speranza é logico che uno si ritrovi con molte manifestazioni di perdita di speranza. Non posso fare a meno di ricordare una riflessione compartita con un gruppo di madri di desaparecidos a Buenos Aires, Argentina, quando da un balcone osservavamo una manifestazione di campagna elettorale in un contesto in cui tutti i candidati erano di destra. In quel momento percepimmo come si concretasse uno degli effetti piú terribili della dittatura: aver eliminato tutta una generazione ideologica e aver condizionato con il terrore le opzioni politiche della generazione successiva, forse in maggior misura a livelli inconsci. Era forzoso riconoscervi l'esito della barbarie e il suo potere di disegno del futuro.

In Colombia mi incontro costantemente con vecchi militanti che possono sostenere solo pochi minuti di conversazione dopo il saluto, per il timore di parlare del loro attuale inserimento dentro il sistema dominante. Ci sono occasioni in cui il tema sorge penosamente, quasi con la necessitá di una catarsi, e allora appare il dilemma esistenziale che continua a tormentare in segreto, tra rovinare la vita sottomettendola al rischio permanente e alla persecuzione aperta o velata, in funzione di speranze che sempre crollano, o cercare di vivere con un minimo di tranquillitá, a costo di zittire i valori in cui prima aveva creduto con la piú profonda delle convinzioni. Non poche volte si considera questo come un tributo al “realismo” e alla “sensatezza”, riconoscendo che il mondo é dominato da poteri avversi alla giustizia e alla ragione.

Mi sono incontrato anche con molti casi opposti: quelli che rovinano la propria vita coscientemente; che la sottomettono ai rischi piú estremi; che rinunciano a tutte le stabilitá familiari e sociali, e assumono impegni che sono sicuri li porteranno alla morte in tempi molto brevi. E non pochi di questi lo fanno senza speranza; con la sicurezza che la propria lotta e l'offerta della vita non cambieranno per niente la situazione, perché i poteri che affrontano sono mostruosamente superiori, peró sentono che l'unica forma di essere fedeli a sé stessi é distruggersi pronunciando un rotondo “NO” di fronte a questo mondo inaccettabile, e cercando di distruggere il piú possibile di questo mondo prima di morire. Qui si spiega una delle forme del terrorismo attuale, quasi l'unica che la nostra societá percepisce e segnala con dito accusatore, poiché il terrorismo di Stato quasi non si considera nel mondo dell'opinione pubblica.

Oggi queste realtá esistenziali stanno incidendo molto nello sviluppo della guerra in Colombia. In alcuni circoli intellettuali si sta aprendo un dibattito sopra se sia etico o no impegnarsi in una guerra che non puó essere vinta, anche se si basa su ragioni giuste. Alcuni, invocando l'”etica della responsabilitá” come la definisce Max Weber, affermano che non é lecito appoggiare una guerra che porta solo distruzioni e sofferenze senza apportare nessuna speranza di riuscita. Altri, appellandosi all'”etica della convinzione” come la definisce lo stesso Max Weber, affermano che la speranza di riuscita non puó essere il criterio fondamentale per partecipare a una guerra, bensí la giustizia intrinseca della sua causa. In tutte le guerre si crea un conflitto profondo tra l'efficacia e l'etica, tra i fini ed i mezzi. Peró qui si progettano sfide molto radicali nella maniera come assumiamo la speranza. Sembra che la speranza sia legata in qualche modo alla previsione di un risultato o di una ricompensa futura.

Molti si domandano se l'assenza della speranza di riuscita non lasci altra via d'uscita che accettare la situazione attuale come imperativo etico, perché tentare di cambiarla provocherebbe solo fallimenti accompagnati da sofferenze. E sfortunatamente questa assenza di speranza di riuscita é ogni volta piú evidente, considerati i mezzi ogni volta piú potenti coi quali lo status quo si sostiene.

Mi sono domandato molte volte se per caso le incarnazioni della speranza non siano tutte troppo legate e condizionate dal fattore della riuscita e della ricompensa.

La teologia cristiana della speranza é cresciuta durante molti secoli circondando di successi e di ricompense i bordi finali dell'esistenza storica dell'individuo; riempiendo di attrattive il Cielo che verrá dopo la morte, le cui gratificazioni si immaginano come inversamente proporzionali alle soffererenze e privazioni dell'esistenza terrena.

L'ideologia politica della speranza si appoggia su di uno schema identico all'anteriore. La stessa sequenza di sofferenza/ricompensa é lí affermata, sebbene in linguaggi secolarizzati, e forse quella necessitá ideologica di consolidare l'immagine del cielo secolare delle rivoluzioni trionfanti, che concretizzi il successo e la ricompensa di coloro che anteriormente investirono in sofferenze e rischi, é ció che piú corrompe le rivoluzioni trionfanti e le converte in un meccanismo di riproduzione delle ingiustizie contro cui prima si erano sollevate.

Peró mi sono chiesto come potremmo slegare la speranza dal fattore della riuscita o della ricompensa che agiscono come suo impulso dinamico. Tutte queste crisi della speranza a volte ci obbligano a tornare a considerare il Vangelo da altre prospettive e a scoprirvi dimensioni inedite.

Molti teologi, durante vari secoli, hanno ritratto Gesú predicando un “Regno dei Cieli” pletorico di ricompense padronali, a cui si accede dopo la morte. Altri teologi piú moderni lo hanno rappresentato meglio predicando un “Regno di Dio” come utopia sociale e storica, a cui si accede quando si assumano comunitariamente i valori che si scoprono con maggiore autenticitá e spontaneitá nel cuore degli uomini, e quando crollano le convenzioni storiche prodotte dall'egoismo. Una corrente contemporanea di teologi ha optato per un punto di partenza poco classico, que é la possibile ricostruzione storica di Gesú di Nazareth come contadino giudeo del primo secolo, sommerso nella materialitá del suo momento storico e reazionando umanamente davanti ad esso, mettendo tra parentesi la sua divinitá fino a poterla ricostruire come analisi di senso elaborata da coloro che assunsero i suoi valori, dotandosi cosí di una protezione di fronte a tutte le signorie disumanizzanti.

In quest'ultima corrente ci sono analisi che sfidano e destabilizzano le nostre comprensioni classiche della speranza. Le relazioni della morte di Gesú, reinserite nella materialitá del suo momento storico, la presentano come un rotondo fallimento, sopra la cui oscuritá si costruisce, forse in varie decadi, la profonda teologia della resurrezione. E nel climax narrativo di questo fallimento si riprende il primo versetto del salmo 22 che per molti non finisce di tenere un effetto scandaloso vicino alla blasfemia: “Dio mio, Dio mio, perché mi hai abbandonato?” In questa teologia non c'é una risposta di Dio che penetri la materialitá storica del fallimento per trasformare o ammortizzare il suo crudo realismo di fallimento. Le risposte divine saranno elaborate su un altro livello che é quello della fede, e in quelle non smetterá di percepirsi sempre il dinamismo che le anima, che si sforza di penetrare nell'immagine occulta del fallimento. Alcune di queste letture si azzardano a segnalare che Gesú preferí morire registrando una dolorosa assenza esistenziale di Dio, prima di morire tradendo alcuni dei valori per i cuali si giocó la vita, i quali lo portarono, senza alcun dubbio, al commovente fallimento della croce.

In questa teologia svanisce quell'immagine della speranza legata inesorabilmente alla riuscita e alla ricompensa, e si deve cominciare ad elaborare una comprensione della speranza relazionata meglio con il fallimento. E non c'é dubbio che tale comprensione della speranza esigerá anche la morte di molte immagini di Dio; immagini legate alla logica esistenziale della riuscita e della ricompensa.

Mi azzarderei a caratterizzare questa riconfigurazione della speranza che qui si insinua, come un'adesione esistenziale a valori autovalidanti, ossia, a utopie e progetti che non estraggono il proprio valore della garanzia, della proiezione o della promessa di riuscita o di ricompensa estrinseca che comportano, bensí che hanno valore per sé stessi e possiedono un potere gratificante intrinseco che puó convivere perfettamente con il fallimento senza per questo distruggersi.

Non ignoro che questa comprensione della speranza non rientra nella nostra cultura occidentale. L'essere umano configurato dalla nostra cultura, come lo segnala Erich Fromm nell'Arte d'amare, “sperimenta la sua energia vitale come un investimento dal quale si deve ottenere il massimo lucro, tenendo in conto la sua posizione e la situazione del mercato della personalitá (...). La sua finalitá principale é il commercio vantaggioso delle sue destrezze, delle sue conoscenze e di sé stesso come ‘bagaglio di personalitá'” [2]. Tutte le nostre strutture ed istituzioni educative, ricreative, economiche, sociali e accademiche sono basate su questa centralitá della riuscita, come causa efficiente e finale dell'energia vitale, a cui nemmeno si sottrae la religione: Fromm aggiunge: “la credenza in Dio si é convertita in una risorsa psicologica la cui finalitá é rendere l'individuo piú adatto per la lotta competitiva” (ibid.). Non c'é dubbio che il cristianesimo si é adattato profondamente, durante i secoli, a questo modello culturale e per questo dovremmo farci troppa violenza per separare la speranza della riuscita che é stato il suo suolo nutritivo.

Una speranza che possa convivere con il fallimento, direbbero non in pochi, si converte in una speranza malinconica, spogliata della allegria e dell'entusiasmo che sono stati considerati come le sue note concomitanti. Non c'é altro riemdio che accettare questo verdetto che tuttavia rimane impigliato nei nostri modelli culturali di un'allegria e un entusiasmo profondamente amalgamati anche con la riuscita.

Un cristianesimo contro-culturale, che credo sarebbe il piú autentico, dovrebbe attingere di piú dai modelli delle culture sotterranee degli esclusi, quasi sempre criptati sotto rivestimenti culturali equivoci, che permettano loro di sopravvivere sotto la cultura dominante, peró mirando a contro-valori che appena spuntano sotto forti cappe di censura. Mi sono chiesto, per esempio, perché la morte violenta possieda tanta densitá rituale e festiva, anche se si deve rivestire di tanti simboli negativi che la rendono accettabile tra i modelli culturali dominanti. Non abbiamo mai ottenuto che la celebrazione della Pasqua competa in densitá festiva con i Venerdí Santi, nonostante la Pasqua ritualizzi con esuberanza un successo sublime, che cerca di far sfumare l'incubo del fallimento del Venerdí Santo. Quale cerimonia potrá superare l'entusiasmo tragico dei funerali dei kamikaze palestinesi?

Esistono allegrie che si rivestono di tristezza. Esistono entusiasmi che si rivestono di tragedia. Non é facile sovvertire strutture mentali configurate dalla centralitá della riuscita.

In tutta questa densità festiva della tragedia, sembra che si nasconda qualcosa che non si può esprimere in altro modo nella cultura dominante, ed è la convinzione profonda che è preferibile soffrire língiustizia che partecipare alla ingiustizia, anche se il soffrire la ingiustizia ha tutte le connotazioni negative dellínsuccesso nella cultura dominante e il patecipare alla ingiustizia è associato a tutti i successi e allegrie della cultura dominante. Questa convinzione la esprime uno scrittore marxista ceko, Milan Machovec, nel suo bel libro “Gesù per gli atei”. Nel suo libro afferma che: “un'ateo che assume seriamente, fino alla morte, la vita e lo sforzo per il movimento che ama, senza cinismo e senza riserve opportunistiche può benissimo ammettere che il momento in cui Pietro scoprì che Gesù era ancora vincitore, anche se fino a quel momento vi era stata solo una triste e concreta morte in croce, è stato uno dei momenti più grandi dell'umanità e della storia” [3]

Però per scoprire questo è necessario prendere conscienza del fatto che la maggior parte delle allegrie, esiti e trionfi della cultura dominante vengono associati all'ingiustizia, e che la costruzione della giustizia viene ordinariamente associata all'insuccesso e alla sofferenza, anche se ha il massimo potere gratificante in un Vangelo che non si conforma alla cultura dominante.

Voglio solamente segnalare con questo che i pozzi dove beve la controcultura sono pozzi profondi, e non é facile immergersi in queste grotte.

[1] ROMM, Erich, “La Rivoluzione della Speranza”, Fondo di Cultura Economica, Bogotá, 2000, pag. 21

[2] FROMM, Erich, “L'Arte di Amare”, Paidos, Barcellona, pag. 103

[3] Machovec, Milan, “Gesù per atei”, Sígueme, Salamanca, 1976, pg. 39

Paramilitarism A Criminal Policy of the State Which Devours the Country

Javier Giraldo M. , S.J. — 2005-12-19T18:42:01Z

To understand paramilitarism and how it functions in Colombia, it is useful to look at the root meanings of the term. Crisostomo Eseverri Hualde, the author of an erudite Dictionary of Etymology of Spanish Helenisms, published in Spain in 1944, notes the significance of the Greek preposition “para,” used as a prefix in numerous Spanish language words. According to him, there are three meanings of this preposition: 1) approximation; 2) transposition; and 3) deviation or irregularity. In effect, this preposition is utilized to make reference to something which is next to, adjoining, which is similar to, but which at the same time is beyond, outside of, leaving from the entity denoted by the principal body of the word.

Some examples illustrate better the meaning: “parabiosis” denotes the union between two twin beings of which only one has its own independent life, while the other, a parabiotical, only lives at the cost of the first. “Paracite” (with a “c”) is an abnormal cellular element of an organism; and a “parasite” (with an “s”) is a living organism which feeds upon the juice of the other. The concepts of proximity and deformation are integrated, thus, in the meaning of this preposition.

According to the above, “paramilitarism” denotes activities close to military, but which at the same time deviate from or are irregular from the militia. “Paramilitary groups” are bodies which act together with the military institution but which at the same time exercise irregular action, deviated, deformed, from the military.

If the military institution has a role in society or in a state governed by laws, a State of Law, it is exactly that of exercising, in the name of and by delegation of the social body, the armed or war activity in defense of that same social body, within strict ethical and legal norms which impede it from departing from its dangerous role. If there is a justification for the existence of the institution, it is precisely the danger that someone who is not rigorously formed in the ethical and legal canons of the use of arms might have opportunity to use them, and above all that someone not be held rigorously accountable for his actions in the use of arms.

Both the politization or ideological conversion of men of arms, which leads them to use force in the defense of the interests of one group or sector of the society and not in defense of the interests of the community as a whole, and the practice of linking armed action to civilian persons or groups contradict the legitimizing principle of the armed forces of the state. In this last case, the armed forces lose their reason for being, since this is essentially conceived to be an exercise or action which cannot or ought not to be exercised by civilians. Therefore this tends to destroy the founding principles of the State of Law: equality of all those associated before the law and the illegitimacy of any citizens using force to submit others to their interests.

The denaturing of the military institution occurs when these departures from the norm are added together: the adopting of an ideology by ideolization of the armed forces and the blurring of the frontiers between what is civilian and what is military. But these departures reach the highest level of perversion when they are conditioned to mechanisms of secrecy, as subterfuges to make a mockery of their responsibilities. When one arrives at this level, the “State of Law” has ceased to exist.

* * *

The tendency to erase the borders between the civilian and the military has a long history in Colombia and has even been sought to be legalized by means of spurious processes.

Up to 1989, the legal substantiation for the proliferation of paramilitary civilian armed groups coordinated by the Army was found in paragraph 3 of Article 33 of Decree 3398 of 1965. This was converted into permanent legislation by Law 48 of 1968. This principle authorized the Ministry of National Defense “by conduct of authorized commanders to support, when it considers convenient, as if private property, arms which are considered as being of a private use of the Armed Forces.” Besides this, in Article 25 the mentioned Decree authorizes the National Government to utilize the civilian population “in activities and works by which they contribute to the reestablishment of normality.”

However, in a sentence of May 25, 1989, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional Paragraph 3 of Article 33 of said Decree 3398 and explained what Article 25 covered. According to the Supreme Court, Paragraph 3 of Article 33 conflicted with the constitutional principle of a monopoly of arms of war being in the head of the government, “which is responsible for maintaining public order and for reestablishing it when it is disturbed.”

This is a legal disposition which has, in addition, the Court observed, an “historical sense for resolving serious conflicts which affect civilian relations among Colombians and which now acquires a renewed significance in the face of problems which have brought about the diverse forms of the present violence.”

With respect to Article 25, the Supreme Court explained that it is only “the National Government, working as such, the President and Minister of Defense, which can, by means of Decree, mobilize and utilize all Colombians in the task of reestablishing normality, when a cause of foreign war, commotion or public calamity presents itself.”

The Court noted that “the interpretation of these norms has led to confusion in some sectors of public opinion which propose that they can be utilized as a legal authorization to organize civilian armed groups.” But the Court itself is emphatic in concluding that “the activity of these groups is located at the margin of the Constitution and of the laws.”

Notwithstanding the decision of the Court, high government counselors continued defending the “legality” of paramilitary groups, or groups of self-defense until 1989, with the pretense that their responsible persons not be tried in a judicial process.

The abusive interpretation of these norms was so audacious in the high military ranks that very soon internal resolutions began to appear tending to impel the involvement of the civilian population in armed actions. Resolution 005 of April 9, 1969 in its Article No. 183 is oriented toward “organizing in military form the civilian population, so that it will protect against the action of the guerrillas and will support the carrying out of combat operations.”

Further along, the same resolution establishes the setting up of “self defense boards.” These are defined as “an organization of military type which is made up of civilian personnel selected from the combat zone, which is trained and equipped to develop actions against groups of guerrillas who appear in the area or to operate in coordination with troops in actions of combat.” These “self defense boards” also will be utilized to “prevent the formation of armed groups.” The setting up, training and providing of arms to them are also considered in the resolution.

After the mentioned resolution, many others followed which promulgated rules of anti-guerrilla combat, where it was taken as given that the objective of the troops would be setting up of armed civilian groups and providing orientation to promote them. (See the Counter-Guerrilla Manual of 1979; the Manual of Combat Against Bandits or Guerrillas-Resolution 0014 of June 25, 1982, EJC-3-101/82; the Regulations of Counter-Guerrilla Combat-EJC-3-10/87).

But the linking of the civilian population to armed actions, which supposedly would be exclusively of active members of the public forces, obeys an unconfessable objective which becomes explicit in some of these “secret” manuals, thanks to its character of being clandestine: it hides the identity of agents of the State or allows them to carry out “covered up operations.”

Paramilitarism becomes, then, the keystone of a strategy of “Dirty War,” where the “dirty” actions cannot be attributed to persons on behalf of the State because they have been delegated, passed along or projected upon confused bodies of armed civilians. Those committing the crimes are anonymous and easily definable as common delinquents who act and thereafter disappear into the fog. This covers up responsibility for acts which have no legal justification or legitimacy, not even during times of warlike confrontations. The result is that they confound and complement two types of events: actions of military officers camouflaged as civilians and military action of civilians protected in a clandestine way by military personnel. Both types of procedures have the same objective: to provide impunity through cover ups.

* * *

The terrorist wave which was set loose in Bogota and in other regions of the country towards the end of 1978, after Decree 1923 became law-that Decree being better known as the Statute of Security-led to the identifying of an audacious form of “Terrorism of the State.” In effect, beginning in September of 1978, phone and written threats were received by people known for their beliefs in democracy, including a high magistrate of the Court who objected to the constitutionality of the Statute of Security. Dynamite was used in attacks carried out against the headquarters of the Communist Party, against an afternoon newspaper of the capital city, and against a magazine. The kidnapping and “disappearance” of several activists of the left and of university leaders, were carried out by the underground “Triple A” (or “American Anti-Communist Action”). Later, the findings of the precarious investigative processes which were initiated and the confession of two deserters to a Bogota daily newspaper, led to the uncovering of agents whose identity was kept secret by the Triple A to military personnel attached to the “Battalion of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Charry Solano-BINCI.” The names of the officials who were charged with these deeds would later on be familiar to the majority of Colombians, since they received all of the promotions and military honors possible and occupied the highest offices and responsibility in the hierarchy of the Colombian Armed Forces.

* * *

On December 3, 1981, a helicopter spread fliers over the City of Cali announcing publicly the establishing of the group MAS: “Death to Kidnappers” (Muerte a Secuestradores). The fliers mentioned that 223 chiefs of the Mafia (the “kidnapables”) had joined together and had put up money to create a squadron of 2,230 men, which was to execute without mercy any person linked to any kidnapping. The fliers affirmed that “the kidnappers who were detained by the authorities will be executed in prison.” They cited the case of Martha Nieves Ochoa, daughter of an Antioquian drug - trafficking leader, who was freed by MAS after her kidnapping by members of the M-19 guerrilla group.

The logo of MAS began to appear in diverse regions of the country, attributing to itself numerous crimes, disappearances, massacres, assassinations, attempts at assassination, and threats. A youth captured in Medellin in May of 1982 and brutally tortured in the installations of the B-2 one night was taken blindfolded to a private house to avoid having a search commission find him in the military quarters in which he had been tortured. Later, the house would be identified as that of Fabio Ochoa, which provided evidence of the close collaboration between drug traffickers and military officers in this type of covered-up operation.

The year 1982 was full of actions of MAS. Civilian armed groups in rural regions began to identify themselves with this logo, particularly in Caqueta and in the Middle Magdalena. There was no doubt that a strategy of private and clandestine justice had been mounted with the participation and support of the Armed Forces. The national and international movement in favor of human rights began to pressure the Betancur government to take a position with respect to this phenomenon and Betancur requested that the Attorney General investigate.

From October of 1982 on, eight criminal justices, accompanied by special prosecutors and by investigators of the judicial police, carried out investigations in Medellin, Cali, Barrancabermeja, Puerto Berrio, La Dorada, Puerto Boyaca and Arauca. On February 20, 1983, the Attorney General (Procurador General) made public a report about MAS with the names of 163 persons linked to this death squad, among them 59 active members of the public forces. In defining the phenomenon, the Attorney General affirmed:

“This deals purely and simply with government personnel who get out of line facing the temptations of multiplying their capacity of action and of taking advantage of private agents, whom they begin to take as “guides” and “informers,” collaborators and helpers in general, and whom they end up using as a hidden arm so that a plan using them as hired killers is made unofficially which officially these personnel could not do.”

The animated reaction of the Armed Forces toward the report led to fear of a coup and that is what the Minister of Defense of that time insinuated in an editorial of the Magazine of the Armed Forces (January, 1983):

“Arguments for a new internal conflict of the nation could be originating, since undoubtedly that honest part of society, which considers itself represented in a dignified manner and defended by the Armed Forces, would tend to stand up at the side of these institutions and the institutions, facing the perspective of the undermining of their dignity, could become of a mind for a struggle of incalculable and unforeseeable proportions which would take our country to a new phase of violence”.

The Attorney General's office itself would adopt from that time on a favorable attitude toward paramilitarism, by abstaining from gathering evidence and by refusing to implement any sanctioning measure against the members of MAS. The country would tend to accustom itself from then on to the so strange policy of impunity which is covered under the name of an “Attorney General's Office of Opinion” (Procuraduria de Opinion).

The government did the same and abstained from discharging the accused from military service. Meanwhile, the Congress of the Republic approved promotions and honors for almost all of them. A retrospective reading of this lists shows that the State, by means of all its powers, conferred upon the members of MAS successively the highest responsibilities in the management of “public order” and the highest posts and honors in the military hierarchy. From then on, the paramilitary strategy was clearly shown, with the clearest signs that could be set forth in the mechanisms of social communication, as an uncompromising policy of the state.

* * *

The point of transition of command from President Julio Cesar Turbay to President Belisario Betancur in 1982 also signified a fundamental restructuring of the repressive policy of the state.

A high level evaluation, carried out within the Armed Forces, upon the effects of the repressive model which grew up around the Statute of Security (19781982), gave as a result a military failure (since subversion increased in alarming proportions during this period in which all had been designed for its definitive extermination) and a political failure (for the notable deterioration of the governing party as much at a national level as an international level).

Betancur designed, as a way out of this, talk of “peace” and of “negotiation.” However the internal communications directed to the military high command by its high officers on June 25, 1992 and on May 1, 1994, provided evidence of the military's lack of agreement with this model and revealed an underground movement within the Public Forces in support of another strategy not made explicit.

But in one part of the country, disagreement with the “politics of peace” of Betancur was proclaimed loudly and a different alternative was pronounced, with pride and noise, as a solution to the conflict: an alliance between the Armed Forces and civilians in a counterinsurgency struggle. At the entrance to Puerto Boyaca a gigantic billboard was erected on which a “welcome” was extended to “the anti-Communist Capital of Colombia.”

A coming together of powers and circumstances converted Puerto Boyaca into the “Vatican” of paramilitarism between 1982 and 1989: creation of the XIV Brigade of the Army and its placement in Cimitarra and later in Puerto Berrio (1982-83); assignment to that Brigade of the Barbula Battalion, located in Puerto Boyaca (1983); the mentality of the commanders of these units, infused completely with all of the principles of the Doctrine of National Security, as they explained it numerous times; the unrestricted support which their superior hierarchies gave them at the highest levels; the leadership of military and civilian mayors, who were originators of the project; the economic support of cattlemen of the zone and of other wealthy persons; the support of political leaders of the zone, favored by their liberal chiefs of ministerial rank; and abuses and extor tions by the XI Front of the FARC, guerrillas, which operated in the region.

The paramilitarism of Puerto Boyaca was converted little by little into an undertaking of great strength. Soon it changed its name from MAS to that of autodefensas (self-defenses). It was organized as a network of armed civilian groups, coordinated and trained by the army, in a frenetic action of extermination of “communists.”

The bombardments carried out by military helicopters were accompanied or followed by exterminating incursions of the “Autodefensas,” directed against activists of any social or political organization of leftist ideology. The arms were provided to them by the XIV Brigade, as was publicly announced in the newspaper Puerto Rojo, in its edition of August 1987: “The arms were acquired in the XIV Brigade, undoubtedly by all persons who needed them....” A legally registered organization, ACDEGAM (The Peasant Association of Farmers and Ranchers of the Middle Magdalena), channeled military projects, “legally”-those which were financial, educational, sanitary, of infrastructure and of roads. By means of these the “Autodefensas” sought to win and control the entire population. Later a “legal” political movement would seek to expand the experience as political ideology: MORENA (The Movement of National Renovation).

No one would be able to say that the diverse powers of the State did not back the paramilitary plan of Puerto Boyaca. In the archives of the state there are to be found at least four confessions which coincide and are highly reliable:

1.On May 10, 1988, agents of the DAS drafted a comprehensive document based upon the confessions of Diego Viafara Salinas, who was a member of the City Council of Puerto Boyaca between 1988 and 1990, but who had been linked to the “Autodefensas” since 1983. Viafara detailed the participation of the Barbula Battalion in the paramilitary plan and its coordination with the Liberal Party politician Pablo Guarin, who was himself supported by the Minister of Government Jaime Castro, as was also his long work in health plans of ACDEGAM (page 7). Participation is viewed in the activities of ACDEGAM and the “Autodefensas” by recognized leaders of the paramilitaries or of drug trafficking of some other regions, such as Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, Fabio Ochoa, Fidel Castano, Victor Carranza and Pablo Escobar (page 8 and page 20). Viafara's statements also allege that the Barbula Battalion and the Autodefensas carried out patrols together (page 10).

The statement by Viafara also describes in detail circumstances in which the alliance between the “Autodefensas” and the drug traffickers began in 1985 (page 11) and the hiring of Israeli and English mercenaries to train the paramilitaries (page 19). It enumerates the places in the country where the “Autodefensas” had been established (pages 24-26), and these coincided with the large number of reports which had been presented about the presence of paramilitary groups attached to the Armed Forces. Viafara's statement amply tells of the development of the relations between paramilitarism and drug-trafficking and the mechanisms used to undermine investigations about crimes which they commit (pages 50 and following).

2.In November 1989, the Dijin of Bogota interrogated Luis Antonio Meneses Baez, who had been captured for other suspicious activities, and drafted another profoundly revealing document which contains his confessions. Meneses reveals there that the commanders of the Brigade and of the Battalion (XIV Brigade and the Barbula Battalion) linked him to the “Autodefensas” of Puerto Boyaca in 1981, at a time when he was an officer of the army. He affirms that “the peasant autodefensas...are a policy of the Government for the counterinsurgency struggle” (page 4). Later, the II Brigade, with headquarters in Barranquilla, gave him the task of creating other “Autodefensas” in the south of Bolivar. The B2 of the Brigade established the link between the “Autodefensas” and the military hierarchies and the arms which were provided by Indumil (the government military provisions office) (pages 5 and 6). When in 1987 the “Autodefensas” saw the necessity of integrating themselves on a national level,

“military intelligence led by the Charry Solano Battalion brought together peasant self-defense movements under their control and to do that they organized a meeting with the regional leaders in the buildings of the Charry, where a National Self-Defense Board arose, composed of leaders of approximately eight regions, whose function was to promote the system of self-defense and to coordinate with army intelligence operations “(page 7).

Three national meetings are talked about: one in the Charry Solano Battalion in 1986; another in Santander in 1987; and another in September of 1989 in the rural are a of Caqueta (pages 10-11). The organization possessed a military chief, who “coordinated the mixed operations of a military type with the Armed Forces” (page 11). There are enumerated 22 fronts of “Autodefensas,” which coincide with the recognized focus points of paramilitarism in the country (pages 15-17); in each front the “Commander or military person in charge” “coordinates with the Self-Defense board and the Armed Forces the operations and activities to be carried out (page 18). With respect to patrolling, Meneses's statement alleges that

“normally it is mixed (Armed Forces-Autodefensas), based upon techniques imparted by the A r m y...when the Autodefensas is alone, it is informed of the movements of military units or of the Police which can be made aware of its activity”(page 22).

Meneses Baez establishes in his confession that there is a certain change in emphasis which occurs in the relations between the Armed Forces and the “Autodefensas” in 1989: “Until the beginning of 1989, the contacts were made with the High Command of the Army and now intermediaries are utilized...”(page 24).

3.In 1990, the DAS (Administrative Department ofSecurity) drafted another document with the confession of Army Major Oscar de Jesus Echandia Sanchez, who had been the military mayor of Puerto Boyaca between 1981 and 1982 and a co-founder of the MAS. He retired from the army in 1988, when an order of capture calling for the assassination of the Mayor of Sabana de Torres weighed upon him, but he was protected by the command of the VIII Brigade, continuing attached as a retired military officer to paramilitarism until his confession in 1990, when he became an informant of the DAS.

Major Echandia told with chilling casualness of the killing of “communists” and even of “galanistas” (followers of Luis Carlos Galan, a Liberal Party leader) in the Middle Magdalena, referring to about 300 assassinations (pages 6,7, 10). The historical conjuncture in which the alliance between paramilitarism and drug trafficking was produced is pointed out, 1983-84 (page 8). He denounces the close relationship existing between the Commander of the School of Cavalry of the Army, Colonel Plazas Vega, and the “Autodefensas” of drug trafficker Rodriguez Gacha (page 9). Major Echandia's story uncovers the originating relationship which the paramilitary structure of Puerto Boyaca had with other paramilitary structures which later on were developed scandalously, such as those of San Juan Bosco de La Verde and the Chucurena region and those of Uraba and Cordoba commanded by Fidel Castano (page 11). Major Echandia's statement tells of the hiring of English and Israeli mercenaries for the training of the paramilitaries in 1989 (page 14 and following) and affirms that “always when foreign persons visited Puerto Boyaca, especially mercenaries, they arrived accompanied by a convoy of agents of the F-2 or civilian personnel of the army” (page 20).

4.When in 1989, Colonel Luis Arcenio Bohorquez Montoya, commander of the Barbula Battalion of Puerto Boyaca, was called upon to end his military service after word of the scandal had been released about the presence of foreign mercenaries who trained paramilitary group members, this official made public a letter to the Minister of Defense in which reference was made to the former directors of the highest military officialdom linked to the creation of the self-defense groups, directorships which extended up to the highest hierarchies. The officer indicated he did not understand why he was punished since he had limited himself to following the orientation of his superiors in the hierarchy. (Cite to the daily newspaper “La Prensa,” October 15, 1989, page 5).

* * *

The paramilitary experience of Puerto Boyaca was, thus, profoundly revealing. The diverse confessions which revealed its structures and practices permit the sketching of its fundamental characteristics: • Financial support on the part of the trade organizations and powerful businesses: large agricultural producers, cattlemen, oil companies, and later drug trafficking led by its most recognized leaders; • Political support of military and civilian mayors, of leaders of the traditional parties whose line of “cacique-style leadership” penetrated up to the Congress and to the high Executive Power by means of sponsoring ministers; • Military support in the local battalion which at the same time obtained its support from the respective brigade arriving at the high command of the Army to coordinate at the moment of expansion of the experience, the National Self-Defense Board through the Charry Solano Battalion; (It needs to be added that the international military support through the English and Israeli mercenaries were escorted to Puerto Boyaca by public forces, and also enjoyed immunity within their own countries). • Highly effective support by the judicial power, which absolved the responsible parties or tabled the poor criminal proceedings which had been opened on the occasion of hundreds of crimes committed by the paramilitary structure. And when the courts sentenced some person involved in these crimes to punishment for them, they refused to investigate and judge the lines of command and the criminal structure itself; • Extremely effective support by the Executive and Legislative powers, which, in spite of the publicity of the names of those who set up and directed this criminal stru c t u re, provided distinction to those responsible with all kinds of promotions in rank and honors which the military hierarchy and tradition provided for; • Remarkably effective support by the organisms of control of the state, which abdicated voluntarily their powers to punish wrongdoers upon finding themselves face to face with this paramilitary phenomenon.

* * *

Then in 1987, the scandalous development of paramilitarism began to be a point of public debate. In September of that year, the debate reached Congress and there many positions were made explicit: The Minister of Defense, General Rafael Samudio, confessed himself in favor of the “Autodefensas”; he was accompanied by generals and former generals, former Ministers and political leaders, predominantly conservatives, as well as leaders of powerful economic trade organizations.

The years 1988 and 1989, marked by an impressive number of massacres which made history, attributed to the paramilitaries, sharpened the debate. It was, however, when dialogue with some guerrilla groups began that the “legal” status of the paramilitaries came to be defined. In effect, some sectors of the M-19, facing the prospect of a transfer to a legal status, found in the government's predominant interpretation of Article 33 of Law 48 of 1968 a possibility of continuing as an armed group but “within the bounds of legality.”

M-19 leaders suggested to the governmental negotiators that the Minister of Defense provide them with safe conduct passes for the use of arms designed for private use by the Armed Forces, so as to constitute themselves as “Autodefensas” in the style of those already “legally” existing, supported, promoted, and protected by the public forces.

President Barco was pressured, then, using his powers under the “State of Siege,” to issue a decree suspending the provisions of Paragraph 3 of Article 33 of Law 48 of 1968 (Decree 815, of April 19, 1989). Later, the Supreme Court would declare this norm to be “unconstitutional” (after tolerating it for 30 years!), but it would leave clear that the civilian armed groups never had been legal, since with the two controversial articles still existing, nothing authorized their interpretation as legalizing groups of armed civilians.

Barco issued other complementary decrees “against paramilitarism”: he created an advisory commission to coordinate the struggle against paramilitarism (Decree 813 of 1989) and a special armed body to combat paramilitary groups (Decree 814 of 1989). Besides this a Barco decree classified promotion or participation in these groups “wrongly called paramilitary groups” as a crime (Decree 1194 of 1989).

With these measures apparently paramilitarism became illegal. However, it is known that the advisory commission (called “Commission Against Hired Killings”) met only once, only to justify its existence. Its one meeting had no real importance, and the supposed armed body to combat paramilitarism never existed. The judicial power, on its part, never has come to condemn anyone for paramilitarism. The only intent to capture some paramilitary persons, on March 29, 1992 in El Carmen de Chucurí, was impeded by an illegal military threat whose authors were never themselves punished either. We must remember here that Luis Antonio Meneses Baez in his confession had pointed out that “until 1989 contacts were made with the high command of the army and now intermediaries are utilized” (page 24).

A change came about, thus, in paramilitarism in the period of time around 1989: the shrill and audacious public cycle of the model of Puerto Boyaca had ended. From then on, paramilitarism would not be recognized explicitly by the government; it would pass to the condition of a clandestine prostitute, but its actions would not be diminished on that account. On the contrary, supported by secrecy it would become even stronger.

* * *

The paramilitary complex of Puerto Boyaca, as it is described in three more extensive confessions, was projected onto various regions of the country where important paramilitary focus areas were created. One of these was the region of Uraba and the south of Cordoba, where Fidel Castano Gil would become the paramilitary's principal leader (see Viafara, pages 8 and 20; Meneses, pages 15-17; Echandia, page 11).

Echandia states that

“In 1988...it became known that Gonzalo and Henry Perez had bought properties in Uraba and that by the order of Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha they organized a “cleansing” of the part of Uraba that is in Antioquia. The massacres in Uraba began then. Participating as the leaders were N.N. (alias Fercho), a former member of the Ricardo Franco Front of the FARC, and Fidel Castano Gil. While Luis Rubio was Mayor of Puerto Boyaca, he coordinated the transportation of the hired killers to Uraba.”

On April 4, 1990, another paramilitary group member, this one in the service of Fidel Castano, made a confession before the DAS and told the details of some massacres: that of 42 peasants in Pueblo Bello (Turbo, Antioquia, in January of 1990); that of the small settlement Villavicencio (Valencia, Cordoba, in October of 1988); and that of Pueblo Bujo (Monteria, in November of 1989). He also told of the assassinations of Alfonso Ospina and of Father Sergio Restrepo, S.J., in Tierralta (in June of 1989). According to Rogelio de Jesus Escobar, the hired killers of Castano, at that time around 100 in number, had as the center of their training the hacienda Las Tangas (Valencia, Cordoba), which he owned.

A former soldier testified in 1992 that at that hacienda only simulations of “searches” were carried out, since only commanders entered the hacienda and afterwards they left with boxes of liquor, cigarettes, canned goods and soft drinks to serve a banquet to the soldiers at the entrance to the hacienda. The same soldier affirms that some vehicles which were seen in the hacienda were seen frequently at the XI Brigade in Monteria. This testimony was “disappeared” by the Technical Unit of the Judicial Police. Escobar, in his confession, reveals the close relations between Castano and the Mayor of Monteria and describes how “the Police Station of Valencia had at its disposal a frequency to communicate with the organization of Fidel Castano, advising it in opportune fashion of the presence of suspects or of the carrying out of operations in the farms of the paramilitary group” (page 33).

* * *

Another of the paramilitary structures which originated in the complex in Puerto Boyaca, but which would take its own shape, and, in this case, would be converted into a pet pilot project of the high military command, is the paramilitary project of the Chucurena zone in Santander.

The confession of Echandia relates how

“in 1987...Henry Perez asked that 10 peasants be selected from the hamlet of San Juan Bosco de La Verde in the jurisdiction of Santa Helena del Opon (Santander), in order to participate in a course of combat in the jurisdiction of Puerto Boyaca. After the course the peasants returned to San Juan Bosco armed with weapons and equipped with war materiel and radios” (page 11).

And previously, supported by the Operative Command No. 10 of the Army with headquarters in Cimitarra (precursor of the XIV Brigade later established in Puerto Berrio), the first paramilitary base had been created in San Juan Bosco de La Verde in 1981. Other confessions which we found in the Annales of the Congress (Year XXVI, No. 104, October 4, 1983, pages 1508 and following) relate how the commander of the Operative Command No. 10 went in military helicopters to train paramilitaries. Puerto Boyaca later invited the paramilitaries of San Juan Bosco de La Verde to come to receive better training.

From San Juan Bosco de La Verde, this paramilitary structure was expanded to the municipalities of El Carmen and San Vicente de Chucurí (1986-1995) and spread in the later years into nearby municipalities: Betulia, Simacota, Galan, Zapatoca, Barrancabermeja, Sabana de Torres and Puerto Wilches. The characteristics which this experience was acquiring converted it into a pilot project for the Armed Forces.

The compulsory involvement of all of the population in armed conflict has been sought, so as to render any position of neutrality impossible within the controlled territory. At the same time, the leaders of this project have sought to make it highly self-financing, by collecting extortionate taxes from the population. There are only three alternatives which are left to the peasant: collaborate with paramilitarism and submit himself to its impositions; abandon the zone; or die. Since 1987, more than 300 residents of El Carmen, who did not wish to submit themselves nor to emigrate, have been assassinated and close to 4,000 have preferred to abandon the zone.

Those who remain must build paramilitary bases; they must deliver up their young children to paramilitary training and patrols by turns; they must pay taxes for the sustaining of the group; and they are required to attend every meeting. The coordination between the military and the paramilitiaries here is revealing: the paramilitary bases are built close to military bases. Meetings are called by the military and are presided over by paramilitary leaders or vice versa. Census data collected by the military appear in the hands of the paramilitary, or vice versa. Persons captured by the military are delivered over to the paramilitaries. And military and paramilitary commanders go about together to stores and houses collecting the “taxes.”

Such a collapsing of all legality only would be conceivable with a thick cover of secrecy, but in this case there are more than 10 years of intense and documented reports. This is perhaps the clearest test made of the justice system, providing evidence of its complicity with paramilitarism. When one Regional Judge ordered the capture of 26 paramilitary personnel of the zone, military officers impeded the capture by means of an illegal threat. The Attorney General (Fiscal General) then brought the case to his office, put at liberty those few paramililtary personnel who had been detained and controlled closely the report on the incident to manage it with the evident goals of coverup and impunity.

The pilot experiment of paramilitarism in the Santander Zone of Chucurí has another ingredient which assures its success: management of the mass media. After the frustrated attempt at making effective the 26 orders of capture issued by one Regional Attorney General-a really outrageous case within the type of behavior of the judicial apparatus facing paramilitarism-the military officers went to the mass media to fabricate a false image of what had really happened. They had two purposes in mind which could not be disguised: to hide the crimes committed there by the state/parastate and to stigmatize before public opinion those who denounced what was happening there. The newspapers “El Tiempo” and “La Prensa” and radio station “R.C.N.” fulfilled these goals by means of the most anti-ethical fabrications and manipulations. The target of these very dirty procedures were the parish priest of El Carmen de Chucurí, one of the leaders of the Base Communities of El Carmen, and the Commission of Justicia y Paz.

The strategy of stigmatizing those who provided information concerning the activities of paramilitary from then on patently involved the mechanisms of personal ties of the paramilitary. The Attorney General's office, by all accounts pressured by military officers, by paramilitary leaders and by journalists who are in league with them, issued an Order of Capture against the parish priest of El Carmen and against “the sacristan,” thanks to gratuitous “accusations” which in no other country would have any validity (persons linked to paramilitarism brought to Cucuta in military helicopters to tell before a “Faceless Judge” that the Father “did” or “said” something, without any reference to dates, places or circumstances which could be checked, without any witness and with numerous contradictions). But these accusations did serve their purpose in getting the mass “information” media to make profuse use of them to convince the country that the parish priest was a “guerrilla” and that, for that reason, his denunciation of paramilitarism was a “lie.”

The confession of the Commander of the Police of El Carmen de Chucurí before the Office of the Procurador in November of 1992 revealed the mechanisms of coordination which operated between the army and the paramilitaries: they had planned to assassinate the parish priest, the city clerk and several members of the Communal Action Board on the night of October 4, 1992, but the Commander of the police failed them at the last moment, disobeying the order to keep all of his men in the barracks, opting rather to defend the victims. The failure of this attempt led to the persecution by other means of the parish priest, as has already been shown.

The confession of Gonzalo Ortega Parada in August of 1987 before the office of the Procurador has uncovered also the connections which existed between the Ricaurte Battalion of the V Brigade and the paramilitary organizations of San Juan Bosco de La Verde. Hired to assassinate the Mayor of Sabana de Torres in August of 1987, Ortega refused to do it and deserted from his job as an informant and as a civilian hitman of the army. He revealed the participation of the paramilitary group of San Juan Bosco de La Verde in the crime, coordinated by the Ricaurte Battalion. Defining his work as a paramilitary person, Ortega stated:

“Other civilians worked on special missions, almost always reservists, because we have a military mentality, but we are not in active service. And thus if something goes awry, nothing can be proven as far as active military personnel are concerned”. (Report in the magazine Cromos, September, 1987)

* * *

Another of the paramilitary structures which appear as mentioned in the three key confessions about Puerto Boyaca is the structure of Victor Carranza, whose paramilitary empire has extended through the Departments of Meta, Vichada, Guainia, Casanare and Boyaca. Some of his men participated in the training given by foreign mercenaries and in some instances coordinated activities. (See Viafara, pages 8/20; Meneses, pages 15/17; Echandia, page 11.)

The confession of Camilo Zamora Guzman, given before the Fourth Court of Public Order of Villavicencio on April 10 and 11, 1989, is a chilling document which reflects the psychology of the hired killer, whose profitable business is death, a business which fills with a lethal coldness the extensive narrative of a genocide, seemingly without so many and such horrible crimes even disturbing his sleep.

Throughout these 20 pages, the curtain is drawn back which covers numerous crimes in the eastern part of the country and allows us to see, as if through a surprise hole, the machinery-still running-which allows us to realize the genocide of the Patriotic Union.

Another confession given in the jail of Villavicencio at the beginning of 1995 by a person in the paramilitary organization of Carranza, reveals in full action the machinery of death which Zamora paints in 1989. In one of its passages, it describes in this way the routine procedures:

“The “autodefensas” and their commanders inform the Police and the Army about the class of “work” which they are going to carry out, in great detail, then on the day and at the hour decided upon the uniformed persons come together; when they are going to carry out a job in a locality...then a police officer comes and goes ahead of the vehicles of the “autodefensas.” And he has the numbers of the license plates of these cars, so at the police checkpoints there is no problem for the cars to go through. In the cars of the “autodefensas,” it is understood, go the arms” (page 2).

* * *

The XIV Brigade of the army, with its headquarters in Puerto Berrio, Antioquia was, from its beginnings, a focus of paramilitarism. It could be inferred that its very foundation was due to these hidden purposes. The Barbula Battalion of Puerto Boyaca belonged to its command; and it participated in the founding, coordination, and maintaining of the most audacious and public paramilitary project, already described.

The confession of Martin Emiliol Sanchez Rodriguez, given before delegates of the Archbishop of Medellin on May 3, 1990 and later before the Office of Special Investigations of the Procuraduria General of the Nation on June 21, 1990, permits one to glimpse another chilling chain of crimes sponsored from the XIV Brigade and to penetrate into the structures of the GRUPO HURE (Hure Group), an authentic paramilitary structure linked to the XIV Brigade, to which the witness belonged. There, the assassinations of Father Jaime Restrepo (in Providencia, San Roque, in January of 1988) and of a nun of the Company of Maria, Teresita Ramirez (Cristales, in February of 1989), are revealed, as are other numerous crimes of this region.

When in 1992 the Commission of Justice and Peace (Justicia y Paz) presented before the Attorney General (Fiscal) of the nation and before the Minister of National Defense new well-founded evidence that the assassins had come from the XIV Brigade, members of which had carried out numerous attempts against the Peasant Refuge of Barrancabermeja-a humanitarian service for peasant victims of state-sponsored violence in the Middle Magdalena region-the Attorney General abdicated his investigative faculties and limited himself to carrying out the role of “good offices” before the minister. And the minister himself refused absolutely to take note of the evidence, in spite of the fact that much of it was based on investigations carried out on diverse occasions in different places and at different times. Later, the Procurador's office decided to “table” the investigation about the attempts against the Refuge without investigating them, and it limited itself to seeking to find out the author of the murder of an informant of the paramilitaries (who had been sought in a derivative form) avoiding investigation of the chain of attempts against the Refuge.

* * *

The confession of Meneses Baez identified Cesar as another focus of paramilitarism (page 15). Since 1989, the National Directorate of Criminal Instruction there had received chilling testimonies about what had occurred on the hacienda Riverandia, of San Alberto in Cesar, property of the family of a member of parliament (Rivera). There on November 4, 1988, two youths were introduced violently into the hacienda by a group of armed civilians, discovering in the interior a camp of the army, and they were victims of torture and an attempt at crucifixion (one of the youths was assassinated when attempting to escape). The owners of the hacienda, the military officers and the group of hired civilian killers acted in unison, using civilian vehicles and civilian dress to perpetrate their crimes.

Various small towns of Cesar have suffered the permanent flagellation of paramilitarism, which has produced in this region numerous victims since 1988. San Alberto, San Martin and Aguachica have been its principal centers of operations. In January of 1995, investigations initiated by the massacre of Puerto Patino (Aguachica) were placed into evidence, thanks to a con fession of another member of the public forces, the paramilitary structure which operates there, directed by the very commander of the military base of Aguachica himself, Major Jorge A. Lazaro.

* * *

Though since 1984/85 paramilitarism has made multiple alliances with important sectors of drug trafficking, in the Department of Valle del Cauca these two phenomena have marched along together.

The massacres of Trujillo, (1988/1994), and Riofrio (1993) in the center of Valle, as well as that which occurred in Cali in April of 1992, uncovered paramilitary structures linked to drug trafficking which operated there and their coordination with military units and police units. One of the units which stand out is the Palace Battalion with its headquarters in Buga.

The Commission of Investigation of the Violent Events of Trujillo, which acted within the structure of the gestures carried forward by the Inter - American Commission of Human Rights, uncovered the responsibility of members of the Palace Battalion in carrying out the Trujillo massacre and in its coordination with a wide network of hired killers who worked in the service of two powerful drug traffickers of the region.

It also uncovered the procedures of secrecy tending to cover up the responsibility of the agents of the state. Among these were the use of private haciendas and vehicles for detentions and tortures, of civilian dress, and of bogus or hidden license plates. Other procedures used were a non-registration of those detained; verbal orders for operations absolutely illegal and criminal; hiding and mutilation of the cadavers; and the intimidation of witnesses and family members. The police Commands of Trujillo, Tulua, Riofrio and Buga linked all of these mechanisms together, in close coordination with the army and with the drug traffickers and their hitmen, to assure the “success” of the crimes.

All this leads us to believe that the genocide which has been practiced in Cali for the last several years against the juvenile population of the marginal neighb o rhoods follows the same parameters of paramilitarism.

The money of the Cartel of Cali, which has permeated and corrupted the police structures of the city- which is public knowledge-has served, in this way, to pay death squadrons infiltrated into these very same neighborhoods, who assassinate youths under justification of “social cleansing.” Paramilitary groups, which are identified from the underground as “Cali Linda” (Beautiful Cali) or “Cali Limpia” (Clean Cali), enjoy the most absolute impunity and act with the overlooking and tolerance which are provided to them by the immense network of police checkpoints which crisscross the marginalized communities of the city.

* * *

Another recognized focal point of paramilitarism has been the Putumayo and its development in that region has been linked also to drug trafficking. In the zone of the great laboratories of cocaine, the drug traffickers have made an alliance, paradoxically, with the Anti-Narcotics Police, which control and protect the powerful paramilitary structure in the region.

During the years 1989 and 1990, the Lower Putumayo lived a blood bath. The army, the Anti-Narcotics Police and “Los Masetos” (a paramilitary group) acted in a coodinated manner and jointly in a demented and continuous massacre, especially of peasant youths, who just because of their age were accused of being “guerrillas,” causing their death with no consequences for the killers.

The cadavers, tossed into rivers with those few rescued buried clandestinely, impeded the initiation even of an “investigation.” When during Holy Week of 1991 the population of Puerto Asis exploded and went out into the streets to protest about the genocide, the police escorted “Pablo” to the airport, he being one of the principal local leaders of paramilitarism, before the protesters could lynch him.

The enormous lists of the dead who had been buried “canonically” through the Church (a very small percentage of the real victims), moved the Procurador General to present the case to the Director General of the Police in order to request of him emergency measures. The high official decided, as a contribution to the solution of the problem, to reassign to other areas immediately all of the personnel of the paramilitary institution there quartered. (Would they not go to “continue their work” in other latitudes?) Notwithstanding the testimony provided , among which was that of a miraculous survivor of one of the routine nocturnal massacres, no “investigation” ended up with a conviction. The perceptible recession in the criminal action of paramilitarism in the Putumayo during 1992 and 1993 appears to have arrived at its end. From the end of 1994 on, reactivation is evident.

* * *

But the essence of paramilitarism is not found only in groups of armed civilians. The action of the public forces “under civilian cover” (sub specie civili) also becomes the essence of paramilitarism insofar as it erases the visible frontiers between that which is civilian and that which is military, denaturalizing in that fashion the very legitimation of the military institution and pervert ing its very objectives, eluding responsibility for its acts before the community by hiding its identity. This perversion of object is especially clear where acts are done to perpetrate or cover up crimes which the military should by reason of their office rather have impeded.

The confession of First Vice Sergeant Alfonso Garzon Garzon, who for 20 years was linked to the Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Battalion Charry Solano, later converted into the XX Brigade of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, given before the Office of Special Investigations of the Procurador General of the Nation on January 22 and 23, 1991, constitutes an impressive window which provides a view of systematic practices of the highest criminality in that institution. This confession was so overwhelming that it permitted the discovery of the mortal remains of some of the victims which confirmed those details of their revelations. As early as 1978, some deserters of the Binci had reported the foundation of the “Triple A” by high officials of the Binci Battalion, as well as some of the crimes which were perpetrated under that acronym. The total connivance of all of the powers of State has been the most effective support so that from that institution crimes continued to be perpetrated endlessly “sub specie civili,” until the most recent of them was consummated in Bogota on March 28, 1995, with the assassination of Carlos Reyes Nino and Edgar Grimaldo in the shopping center Plaza de Las Americas, abandoning in that place a motorcycle registered to the XX Brigade.

The confession which Ricardo Gamez Mazuera provided on August 1, 1989 to the Office of the Procurador General of the Nation in his capacity as a former agent of the police and of the DIJIN (1974-77) and a former intelligence agent of the army command (1978-1989), constitutes another chilling testimony of the systematic criminal practices carried out “sub specie civili” by the intelligence organizations of the Public Forces. Throughout 17 pages of this confession, numerous curtains are opened to reveal the authorship and circumstances of crimes which left p rofound footprints on the national history: the deeds of the Palace of Justice and what became of some of those who disappeared there and the assassination of the Belgian Assumptionist priest Daniel Gillard in Cali.

Uncovered before the reader are death squads which made history in Tulua; unidentified graves which are the resting place for numerous victims of military and paramilitary action in Cucuta, Monteria, Bogota and the Eastern Plains; and “secret” negotiations between drug traffickers and military officers. The arsenal of concrete data and the very specific and sometimes graphic description of zones and places are impressive, but what is even more impressive is the overwhelming impunity with which all of the powers of state protect the numerous persons responsible for crimes.

One receives the same impression upon reading the text of the confession made by Lt. Nestor Eduardo Porras, of the National Police, before the Second Judge of Criminal Instruction in Facatativa on November 22, 1990. What is most impressive is the multitude of crimes narrated rapidly in these 6 pages, perpetrated by the DIJIN of Medellin in association with the Elite Force, of the army, corresponding just to the period January through May of 1990. It is like an instantaneous photograph which provides access to an orgy of blood which takes place in a den of iniquity.

Other revealing texts are the confessions of Saul Segura Palacios and of Carlos David Lopez, members of the 7th Network of Intelligence of the National Navy, given before the national attorney general's office, and later before other governmental offices in 1994. All these elements of military action “sub specie civili” for corrupt purposes are here brought together: civilian offices which are a facade (a store and an office of engineers); a network of hitmen or paid assassins to whom the crimes are entrusted; pseudonyms which identify all the way from the commanding colonel down to each one of the hitmen; payments to informants and to hitmen by means of “reserve funds” of the navy. This monstrous machinery of death underlay more than half a hundred crimes which caused consternation throughout the Middle Magdalena and the whole country.

* * *

At the initiation of the government of President Samper in August of 1994, paramilitarism had been fully consolidated, not only through its prolonged stages of development (beginning in 1968), but also because it had overcome all the obstacles to establish itself as a policy of the state.

Paramilitarism had undergone a great crisis in 1989, when the climax of the questioning of its legal status was reached, consigning it to a formally “illegal” existence. However, at that time the amazing practical intelligence of its initiators and promoters gave it different characteristics and it found a new status which permitted it to survive without losing strength. On the contrary, it demonstrated renewed dynamism which allowed it to overcome the obstacles which appeared “serious.”

One asks oneself how a policy formally “illegal” can subsist with so much dynamism in a state which is said to be “of law.” The reply need not be sought in legal texts, but rather in concrete and routine practices of the diverse powers, offices and institutions which make up the state.

• The military establishment, whose irregular projection is precisely paramilitarism, beginning in 1989 stopped defending publicly the legitimacy or “legality” of paramilitarism. But at the same time it consolidated throughout all of the country its relations, now clandestine or “intermediated” (according to the confession of Meneses Baez), with the networks of armed civilians already established from prior periods and created many other new ones. When some of those structures suffered excessive publicity or denunciation, they were considered to involve “isolated conduct” of an “insubordinate” official.

• For its part, the Executive Power ritualized its “condemnation” of paramilitarism in its speeches, especially in those directed toward international organizations, meanwhile calling to the highest command posts those strongest promoters of paramilitarism and providing promotions and honors to all of those who supported the paramilitaries. An integral part of their discourse was the routine public request to judicial and disciplinary powers to carry out “exhaustive investigations” about the paramilitaries, while at the same time abdicating ad hoc their authority to freely nominate and remove government officials for the purpose of guaranteeing a clean public administration.

• The Legislative Power, for its part, approved all of the promotions and honors for those who supported paramilitarism and passed laws and decrees of disguised amnesty and of judicial privilege applicable to whatever paramilitary group member might “by error” be submitted to investigation or trial (see Law 104 of 1993, Article 9; Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 369 A, B).

• But the wall of protection for paramilitarism built by all of the powers of the state has a central column, which is the Judicial Power.

According to the Administrative Department of National Planning, only 3% of the crimes reported in Colombia result in a conviction. Within this 3%, there has never been an investigation referring to a paramilitary structure. Thanks to this, presidents in their speech can confidently “legitimate” their position before the national and international community, seeking “exhaustive investigations” about paramilitarism, since their position is buttressed by the solid conviction that the opening of an investigation will certainly be formalized, but also the certainty that this will sink and disappear sooner or later, in the “black hole” of impunity.

Forgetting for the moment about military privilege and the structures of penal military “justice” already sufficiently diagnosed within and outside the country as a most effective mechanism of impunity, and leaving aside also for the moment the innumerable mechanism of impunity of the ordinary and regional jurisdictions focused upon in other studies, paramilitarism has enjoyed in the judicial realm extraordinary privileges because of its impunity.

The principal of these is the secrecy which characterizes the crimes of paramilitarism, which from the beginning impedes identification of those who carry out the crimes. But we are not talking here about just any secrecy, such as that which could protect a common criminal. What we are talking about is a secrecy which is protected or “escorted” by agents and/or institutions of the state. It is secrecy which occurs when civilians in the service of soldiers “or soldiers in the service of civilians” perpetrate crimes, often submitting their victims to the force of the “authority of the state” (always difficult or impossible to prove), but using private means (haciendas, vehicles, dress) to consummate the crime. It is secrecy which one realizes the perpetrators of the crimes enjoy, according to the particular case military or police control of the scene of the crime, a control which immobilizes resistance or the intent to report the crimes, or of a total clearing of the scene, when those who carry out the crime control it by themselves and can flee slowly and without any resistance. That secrecy creates the basic conditions of impunity, so that the Judicial Power can play its role.

The Judicial Power is asked not to take into account those specific mechanisms of secrecy officially “escorted,” and to investigate deeds within legal and normal parameters: to look for written orders of search or capture (which do not exist); registries of those detained and of the control of vehicles in the minute books (which do not exist either); to interrogate witnesses who did not see or hear anything; to listen to “free and spontaneous declarations” by the very persons who carried out the crimes; to make relatives, neighbors and friends responsible for “not giving information.”

These rituals having been practiced, there is inexorably declared a “lack of evidence,” legitimating the finding of innocence or the tabling of the case. If by some accident a heroic witness turns up, then there are multiple methods foreseen for destroying that evidence: the threat of death (many times carried out); questioning the moral probity of the person, whether by looking for help from the Institute of Legal Medicine to declare him “mentally perturbed” (a resource which turned out to be key in the massacre of Trujillo and which still maintains absolute impunity of all of its authors), or be it accusing him of being a sympathizer with or collaborator of the guerrillas, and even opening up a criminal proceeding for that “crime” by means of declarations of “faceless witnesses” or of unconditional ones of paramilitarism, arriving at the extreme of issuing an order to capture for that reason (which was the case of the parish priest of El Carmen de Chucurí); or simply disqualifying the witnesses because they would be “interested in the case” (as occurred with the 24 witnesses of the assassination of the Swiss missionary Hildegard Feldmann).

Thus the Judicial Power has been the spinal column of the wall of protection of paramilitarism, and it is the Judicial Power which creates the most basic conditions permitting the military structure to continue projecting itself through this corrupted body, which enjoys the vital substance of the state sucked out by channels astutely hidden, and which at the same time makes possible the speech of the Executive formally “condemning” paramilitarism, remitting it to “exhaustive investigations” and processes of “justice,” at the same time as he raises to the highest posts those who are authors and promoters of paramilitarism, at the same time “absolved” by “justice” or benefited by the routine filing of the evidence without acting on it.

The Office of the Attorney General, for its part, has adopted the same “investigative” and “proof gathering” mechanisms as the Judicial Power, providing a monstrous impunity also in the disciplinary field. Since Attorney General Jimenez Gomez in 1983 made public a list of the members of MAS at the same time as he exonerated them from disciplinary proceedings and punishment, defining his role as the “Procuraduria of Opinion,” his successors have become accustomed to not investigating, processing or punishing, abdicating the disciplinary power which the constitution assigns them. Internal and external pressures have led them, in sum, to adopt the strategy of finding scapegoats (which can be counted on the fingers of one hand and are of the lowest rank), abstaining from investigating structures and chains of command.

The Samper government acts on top of this pedestal or with this backdrop. Its support for paramilitarism made things as easy as could be for it: it only had to leave things as they were, adopting the condemnatory speech of its predecessors and continuing to request “exhaustive investigations” of the judicial and disciplinary powers. But the Samper government did not choose this way. Near the end of the first year of its administration it can be proven that its position toward paramilitarism has not been limited to passive support, which could consist of reaping the benefits from the path built up during more than a decade with the collaboration of all of the offices of the state apparatus.

A few days after he had taken possession as Chief of State, President Samper made public, on September 9, 1994, a document which set forth his policy on human rights. Point No. 5 referred to paramilitarism and defined it as a phenomenon “linked, to a great degree, to the “territorialization” of a certain portion of drug trafficking funds which debilitate the legitimate monopoly of force which the state ought to maintain,” and also as “a phenomenon, very much circumscribed, of formation of peasant “self-defense groups” (autodefensas) as a reaction to the attacks of “subversives.”

No mention of the preponderant role which the State played (and specifically the Executive Power through the highest offices of the Public Forces) in the creation and organization of the paramilitary group. Nor has mention been made of the role as rector which they continue to carry out, with relative secrecy in the most varied places of the country, nor of the protection, support, weight, tolerance and collaboration which the different powers of the state have provided to paramilitarism by means of effective de facto mechanisms when not by formally “condemnatory” speeches which cover up practices contrary to law.

What does this “diagnostic” of paramilitarism seek to do? Certainly not to attempt to combat it, because one cannot combat something which is not accepted as something which really exists.

Once the true phenomenon is denied, or more correctly, it is defined in such a way that its essential characteristics are unknown, the most characteristic profiles and the most serious problematic which it reveals, the broadest spaces are opened to give it weight.

In effect, the changes in the military high command which were carried out last November constituted the most explicit official support behind paramilitarism, and, along the way, an energetic backing for impunity. To prove this, it is only necessary to look rapidly at the lists of the MAS, promulgated by Procurador Jimenez Gomez, to those of the “Triple A,” to the numerous confessions referred to above of outstanding figures who have been shamed by paramilitarism and numerous measures left half done by the judicial and disciplinary powers, thanks to the effective mechanisms of impunity already described.

But the Samper government has wished to go even further: it has rapidly provided “legal” status to paramilitarism, reformulated as “Communitary Associations of Rural Vigilance.”

The communique issued by the office of the president on December 13, 1994, “legalized” the elements which constitute paramilitarism, not just permitting it or tolerating it by means of implicit mechanisms, groups of armed civilians, but rather creating and giving them “legal life,” sustaining them in a supposed “defensive” legitimation (like the “Autodefensas” originated in Puerto Boyaca and expanded throughout the entire national territory) (see Communique No. 7 sub-paragraph b); coordinated by the Public Forces (Communique No. 7, sub-paragraph c); provided with arms by the Public Forces (Communique No. 7, subparagraph e) and financed jointly by the public sector and the private sector (Communique, No.

6). All of the parameters of paramilitarism were reedited there and would acquire, now truly, “legal” status.

The foundation for a reactivation of paramilitarism, having been laid down, and paramilitarism not now being secret, the euphoria was not long in coming. The first half of 1995 has seen the overflowing euphoria of the paramilitary groups (and it is now known that their euphoria is bloody).

The document of the First Summit of Autodefensas of Colombia, which took place at the beginning of 1995 in some part of the country, stated that “fortunately the autodefensas have been revived in the national territory, with a common identity, without leaving the “antisubversive” line” (page 49).

This same document affirms that “no self-defense group allied with the

“autodefensas of Colombia, will return to demobilize its men and it will not fall into the same error as Fidel Castano, who having been convinced that he had eradicated the guerrillas from the zone where he operated, and that the Armed Forces could control it and he demobilized his organization for a while. During this space of time the Armed Forces could not maintain control of the region....And for this reason Fidel Castano found himself obliged to reactivate his self-defense forces” (page 55).

Effectively that part of Uraba in Antioquia and in Cordoba returned in 1995 to be a prisoner of paramilitarism. Disappearances, massacres, assassinations, torture and forced displacement of entire communities were recorded in the report of national and international NGOs which visited the region in April of 1995.

Putumayo, Cesar, Catatumbo and the Province of Ocana, Meta, the Middle Magdalena, the South of Bolivar, Valle and Cauca, Boyaca, Casanare and Arauca, Caqueta and the coffee-growing axis, the Northeast and Southeast of Antioquia, several zones of Santander and the popular communes of Bogota, Medellin and Cali, have experienced in the last several months an impressive increase in paramilitarism.

In Villavicencio, a convention was called together in the meeting place of the Departmental Assembly in the month of March and it reiterated in diverse tones the former goal of “extermination of the Patriotic Union.” Since February, the threats against the Civic Committee of Human Rights of Meta have been multiplied, obliging it to close its offices and move them to Bogota last May.

The cited document of the Summit says that “it was agreed to group together all of the existing self-defense organizations (Autodefensas) in the country which possess a transparent place in the counterinsurgency struggle based around the organization of Autodefensas of Colombia, with the principal mission of combating subversion in the national territory....” It is reported that they were organized in structures such as GRAU (the Urban Self-Defense Group), GRIN (Intelligence Groups) and GRAP (Political Support Groups) and that “it was approved to continue considering those political and union personalities (cuadros) of the extreme left as military targets....”

Whoever reads the mentioned document, above all the chapter on the Armed Forces (pages 18-38), will have little doubt left about its military authorship.

Nor is there any doubt about the reactivation of paramilitarism which has been registered under the Samper government, and upon reading it with the backdrop of its historical development, illuminated by the coincident and overwhelming confessions of its authorized exponents, no one will doubt that what exists is an unyielding Policy of State which is devouring our martyred country.

Javier Giraldo, S. J. June 1995

COLOMBIA, The Genocidal Democracy

Javier Giraldo M. , S.J. — 2005-12-13T19:44:43Z

n the spring of 1986, I was invited by the Catholic Development Committee Against Hunger to take part in the Lenten celebration in France. Before I began to speak, I asked members of the audience what kind of images they associated with my country. Invariably, they associated Colombia with drugs, coffee, cyclists (the annual Tour de France bicycle race is held there) and volcanos (where the November 1985 tragedy of Armero took place, a small town in Colombia that was almost totally buried by an avalanche).

There is no doubt that drugs are the first thing that come to people's minds when they think of Colombia. Some have attributed 80% of the world's drug trade to the Colombian cartels. Although I think the problem has been somewhat blown out of proportion, given the fact that the clandestine nature of the business makes accurate estimates difficult to come by, there is no denying its magnitude. What is important is that this perspective has resulted in the false conclusion that violence in Colombia is linked to drug traffic. Is this simply a result of investigative laziness or are there other factors involved?

Consider the following. On January 30, 1993, a car bomb exploded on a downtown street in Bogota killing 20 people. Almost immediately, news of the bomb, which was attributed to drug traffickers, was circulated worldwide by international press agencies. During the same month of January, 1993, our human rights data bank registered 134 cases of political murder and 16 cases of enforced disappearance in the country.

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Massacre in San Jose de Apartado

Javier Giraldo M. , S.J. — 2005-06-27T19:35:18Z

A telephone call I received last February 23 left me shaken and confused. Luis Eduardo Guerra, one of the first and most tenacious leaders of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community had disappeared. Another of the community‘s leaders told me that from what all they had been able to find out, it was likely he had been murdered. Groups of people from the community had set off to look for him but held out little hope of finding him alive. More and more calls came in that day and the next until, early on the 25th, I traveled to San José with Gloria Cuartas, the former mayor of the town of Apartadó. I went with a heavy heart. I knew the bodies of Luis Eduardo, his companion Bellanira and 11 year old son, Deiner Andrés, had been found. Another of the region's leaders, Alfonso Tuberquia, who I knew and whose son Santiago I had baptized several weeks earlier, had also been murdered alongside his wife and children.

After 8 years of documenting atrocities committed against that heroic community and denouncing them to the authorities, I still had trouble understanding just what had happened. When I thought back over the more than 500 crimes we had denounced over the years, it seemed this was but one more case that fell into the plan of persecution and extermination San José has been subjected to since the peace community was formed in 1996. I shuddered again at the memory of the many massacres that have occurred in San José and the constant persecution of community leaders and members. And, again, there seemed only one possible conclusion, reluctant though I was to accept it because it was simply too disheartening: nothing had changed. The extermination campaign against the peace community continues, unrelenting, in spite of government speeches and assurances to the contrary. But, then, I remembered the many meetings we had with government officials in order to evaluate the implementation of measures to protect the life and safety of San José community members the Inter-American Court of Human Rights had called on the government to adopt, repeatedly, since October,2000,after making an initial request to the government in 1997 that it grant precautionary measures in favor of the population of San José. And I remembered, in particular, the many assurances made by Colombian Vice-President Francisco Santos and members of hi! s office that the present government intended to sit down with San José members and draw up a plan together to protect them. The San José peace community would be protected by the government, he said, not destroyed.

I arrived in San José de Apartadó that Friday, February 25, full of unanswered questions. An army helicopter flew over the village, an enormous bag hanging underneath it, swaying back and forth in the wind. Satellite phone calls by international volunteers accompanying the community from the area of the massacre told us five bodies had been exhumed and taken away: Alfonso Tuberquia, his wife Sandra Milena Muñoz, their five year old daughter Natalia and 18 month old son Santiago and another resident of the area, Alejandro Pérez Castaño. All the bodies were mutilated and showed signs of having been tortured.

Along with Gloria Cuartas and several international volunteers we decided to assist the families in the terrible task of claiming their dead loved ones. There were a number of authorities in the cemetery in Apartadó that Saturday afternoon, the 26th, and the hours passed slowly in endless paperwork and angry complaints to the authorities for their negligence in recovering the other bodies. The bodies of Luis Eduardo and his family had not been found among the cocoa trees on Alfonso's farm in either of the two unmarked graves the killers had left their other victims. They were discovered, instead, lying alongside the Mulatos river, already partly devoured by vultures and pigs. In spite of knowing exactly where they were on the afternoon of Friday, the 25th, investigators from the Attorney General's office ! only got there to ‘officially' remove the bodies on Sunday morning, the 27th. By then, the community search groups were exhausted and had decided to take the bodies back themselves without waiting any longer for the authorities.

Another helicopter, another macabre bag dangling below it and that Sunday afternoon was spent on paperwork to claim the bodies, a process full of useless formalities which serve only to offend the bereaved, their feelings and commonsense. A funeral parlor hired by the mayor's office refused to send a car to transport the bodies because it was dark. In spite of the risk, a young local man offered to take us and two days later received a death threat from a paramilitary soldier who is protected by Colonel Duque, commander of the army battalion which controls the area around San José. The makeshift funeral procession drove through the Barrio Obrero neighborhood in Apartad! ó just before midnight. There was a party going on and a crowd of people were drinking and dancing. Not one of them showed even the least sign of respect for the coffins passing by, irrefutable evidence of the ‘paramilitary culture' that now dominates a town once known for its strong social conscience.

Sometime after midnight that Sunday, we arranged the eight coffins together in the kiosk, the scene of so many community meetings and the place where so many decisions to benefit the community had been made over the years. A vigil with songs, scripture readings and shared thoughts and reflections brought many people to the kiosk early that Monday, the 28th, as they awaited the funeral scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. In a voice choked with emotion, I began the funeral service. Every gesture and every murmur of those in attendance s! eemed laden with grief. I chose a reading from the book of John, in which Jesus says: “No man taketh my life from me but I lay it down that I might take it again”, words that caused many of those listening to him to say he had “a devil and was mad'', while only a few realized that “he who can open the eyes of the blind cannot be mad” (John 10: 17-21). In that reading, I saw not only the mystery of the death and life of Luis Eduardo and Bellanira, Alfonso, Sandra, Alejandro and the other children who were just starting out on life's journey guided by committed and heroic parents but, also, the life and death of a whole Community which has sacrificed more than 150 of its members in its struggle not to give in to the structures of death and indignity that are all around us.

A number of journalists and regional authorities called to ask if they could attend the funeral. They were told how indignant and disappointed members of San José were that instead of condemning such a terrible crime, authorities and journalists had begun a campaign to label the victims and the community as guerrilla ‘sympathizers', a campaign that was to grow as the weeks passed.

After speaking with more than 10 eye witnesses, I was able to reconstruct what had occurred. Some of them were illegally detained and forced to remain in a house by soldiers who arrived in the La Esperanza hamlet on Saturday, February 19th. Others, saw soldiers arrive in Las Nieves hamlet that same afternoon. Early the next morning, they forced their way into the house of Marcelino Moreno, shooting at him in his bed and wounding his daughter. Marcelino, a guerrilla militia member, stood up wounded and grabbed a weapon to confront the soldiers. He was shot dead and a soldier was wounded. On their way through Las Nieves, soldiers chased two local men saying they were going to kill them but a hooded man wearing civilian clothes yelled at them, telling them “not to shoot because they'd ruin the plan”. The two men manage! d to run away and hide from the soldiers who, apparently, were trying not to make much noise with their weapons so the people in the area wouldn't flee. The next day, Monday, February 21st, the soldiers arrive in the Mulatos hamlet, which borders Las Nieves, and run into Luis Eduardo and his family who are on the their way to pick some cocoa on one of his tree stands. One of Luis Eduardo's relatives who is walking with him sees a soldier close ahead on the path but, when he turns to point him out to Luis Eduardo, he crouches down and hides.

The relative urges Luis Eduardo to turn around or run away but he refuses and says he is not going to run but will tell the soldiers that he needs to continue on to pick the cocoa. Suddenly, soldiers move out of the bush all along the path and yell: “Stop and hands up” Luis Eduardo's relative runs off into the trees. The soldiers tell him to stop but they don't shoot and he escapes. He would later say: “they had what they wanted and they weren't going to let him get away to go after me”. Shortly after, he hears the cries of Luis Eduardo and Bellanira which probably means they wasted no time in torturing and killing them. A bloody machete and club were found close to the now partially eaten bodies, not far from where they were stopped by the soldiers. The head of his 11 ye! ar old son, Deiner Andrés, was found 20 metres from his body.

The homegrown communication channels our campesinos use to spread news around the countryside, whose speed and efficiency city dwellers find hard to understand, was in full operation. By twelve noon, a campesino had arrived at Alfonso Tuberquia's house in La Resbalosa hamlet, an hour from Mulatos, to find the family and the farm's four laborers having lunch. He told them about the soldiers and the capture of Luis Eduardo and urged them to leave their farm quickly. As he spoke, he saw soldiers surrounding the house. The men left the house and, although the soldiers opened fire, they somehow managed to get away into the brush. But neither Sandra nor the children had fled w! ith them. Given the intensity of the shooting, the men knew returning to the house would mean being killed. They found refuge in a house 20 minutes or so away but, after two hours when they heard no more shots, Alfonso decided to go back and find out what had happened to his wife and children and die with them if necessary. He told the men he would come back if he could. The men waited for him until noon the next day and, when Alfonso didn't return, went back to the house.

Blood and bloody clothes were everywhere and, stunned, the men realized what they had walked into. They found clumps of hair from Alfonso's daughter, Natalia, in some places with the skin still attached to it as though it had been cut off with a machete. After more searching, the men noticed fresh earth among the cocoa trees and began to remove a little of it. When they begin to unearth mutilated pieces of Alfonso's body, they were horrified. They covered up the hole they had made and ran off. Someone went quickly to tell leaders of the peace community what had happened.

The soldiers continued on and, at about 3 that same Monday afternoon the 21st, arrived at a place between the Mulatos and Las Nieves hamlets known as El Barro. Some of Luis Eduardo's relatives lived there and soldiers shut them in their house, forbidding them from getting anything to eat from outside. Without knowing who they were, the soldiers said they had “killed three guerrillas” that morning and described them to the family. The family knew it was Luis Eduardo, his companion and son they had killed. Some of the soldiers drew a graffiti of their unit on the wall of the house: “Contraguerrilla 33” They were from the 33 Cacique Lutaima counterinsurgency Battalion, attached to the XVII Army Brigade. They were the same soldiers investigators from the attorney general's office would find there when they arrived. Inde! ed, campesinos from the area, expert in following tracks and footprints, had reconstructed the army's route through the hamlets and shown they had never left.

There was no longer any doubt. Another new and horrible crime of State had been committed. The fact that some paramilitaries were among the soldiers -whose uniforms are practically identical to the army's- only confirms and compounds government responsibility for the crime. Nine years of horrendous experiences have taught campesinos well how to identify them. Subsequent government efforts to attribute responsibility for the crime to the guerrillas were so unfortunate as to present as ‘witnesses' two young men who, a year earlier, had been tortured by Colonel Duque and the object of a fabricated judicial scheme designed to force them into a ‘reinsertion program' .Today, they are under the custody of the same people who victimized them, without the freedom to make any kind ! of autonomous decision. But because the vast majority of Colombians know nothing about these truths, these same falsehoods are being used and diffused by the ‘information' media and the government as the basis for a campaign to stigmatize and label the victims and people of the community of peace.

It seeks to make the country and the world believe that the Colombian army and police have not been able to enter San Jose de Apartadó for many years because the peace community won't permit it when the reality is that they have hardly ever left the community

It seeks to make the country and the world believe that the presence of the police and army in all corners of the country is required by the Constitution because it serves to protect the population and enforce the Constitution and the laws. But in San José's case, it is a presence which has always violated people's rights, a presence which has not protected but attacked the civilian population, perpetrating hundreds of horrendous crimes, such as massacres, murders, enforced disappearances, tortures, rape, the burning of houses, illegal searches and arrests, theft of subsistence items, tools, beasts of burden and community and family monies, threats and acts of terrorism; in a word, the very behaviors and activities the Constitution and the laws most strongly prohibit.

It seeks to make the country and the world believe that the peace community ‘obstructs justice' when the truth is that its members have rendered hundreds of declarations to prosecutors without ever having witnessed a single act of justice or reparation; when the truth is that the Attorney General has categorically refused to investigate more than 300 crimes against humanity committed against the peace community, all duly denounced in his office in November, 2003; when the truth is that the government has refused to set up a Commission to Evaluate the Justice System, requested repeatedly by the peace community as a result of numerous irregularities found in legal proceedings; when the truth is that several members of the peace community have been murdered after giving testimony to authorities.

It seeks to make the country and the world believe that the peace community has ‘ties to the guerrillas' when the truth is that guerrillas have attacked members of the community and residents of the area 20 times, resulting in strong, public protests by the community; when the truth is that internal statutes prohibiting collaboration with any armed actor are strictly and transparently enforced by the peace community; when the truth is that the accusations of links between members of the peace community and the guerrilla are fabricated in the XVII Army Brigade based on the false testimony of informants who have been paid or coerced into making statements that would not stand up to even the most rudimentary ! legal analysis.

There is no doubt that the San José de Apartadó Peace Community is a legitimate effort to defend the rights of the civilian population in a war zone and, as such, is a community under very serious and imminent threat. International support and solidarity is crucial in this regard.

JAVIER GIRALDO MORENO s.j. March 27, 2005