The poster above says, "they also marched and they thought that they were doing it for their Country and they didn't know that they were supporting the sinister horror of fascism. I won't march on February 4th."
This poster was made in counter-protest to a multi-country demonstration organized by the Colombian president Alvaro Uribe against the FARC. (Being Colombian) I got e-mails from several Colombians urging me to join this absurd event in New York, outside the United Nations on the February 4th. The thoughts running through my head were, "An international protest against a terrorist group that carries out its terrorism only in Colombia? What are people in Switzerland gonna do about the FARC, who kidnap and harass the Colombian gentry? What the fuck do they hope to achieve, anyway? The Swiss really taking a stand against terrorism in Colombia? Or are Colombians just engaged in the national pass time of keeping up appearances–Believe us we hate terrorists!–except on an international scale?" The protest was not openly announced as being organized by the Colombian government and and it all seemed so poorly conceived and illogical that in retrospect, I should have known.
So many days after all these questions ran through my head, my cousin sent me this article from the Colombian indymedia site. Since it's in Spanish and there was no English counterpart on the American indymedia site, I'll give you a run down of what the article is about. As it turns out, a few counter-protesters did show up at the anti-FARC rally in New York and were basically attacked and called terrorists by the Uribe-organized gathering.
A very tiny bit of background (because to give the full story would be to recount a fifty year civil war in Colombia) of what has sparked this recent public relations campaign by the Colombian government: recently, the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez agreed to negotiate the release of few FARC kidnapped journalists and politicians. The negotiations were apparently successful as two hostages were let go, but then Uribe inexplicably pulled out of the negotiations. Colombia is one of the few Latin American countries that fully backs the U.S. foreign policy and is receiving tidy sums of money to keep up the war on drugs. The U.S. has been leaning heavily on Latin American presidencies to not support or form any alliances with the socialist government of Chavez. So it comes as no surprise that just as progress is being made in the release of these hostages, Uribe would punk out of the negotiations. This way, Uribe can keep the money coming in from the U.S. for the war on drugs, the money coming in from narcotrafficking, and the military support of the right wing paramilitaries (the sworn enemies of the left wing FARC). The February 4th protests were simply a way of keeping up appearances without having to actually do the work to achieve peace in Colombia.
2 comments:
Hello,
I've stumbled across your blog via several other poetry blogs in recent weeks. I can't speak about the Colombian situation as it's obviously extremely complex, with all sorts of evil actions coming from both sides of the FARC-govt. divide.
However, to call Chávez's government "socialist" is inaccurate. What Chávez actually represents is really quite traditional and reactionary in Venezuela: caudillismo. That is, the consolidation of as much power as possible in the hands of a single military man. Chávez most resembles the military dictators Juan Vicente Gómez and Marcos Pérez Jiménez.
The majority of Venezuelans voted against Chávez's desire to install himself as president for life in a referendum last December. Although he conceded defeat the night of December 2, later that week he referred to the victory against his referendum to change the constitution as "una victoria de mierda" (he said this on TV). He also recently vowed to introduce a clause in the constitution that will allow him to stay in power for decades, even though the majority of Venezuelans are opposed to that idea.
In the last decade, Venezuela has degenerated into a nation where an average of 10,000 people are killed in violent attacks every year. Caracas is now one of the most violent cities in the world, where entire swaths of the city are controlled by criminal gangs who have nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with their own brand of thug capitalism. Chávez has yet to develop a plan to combat this frightening crime wave, even after 9 years in office. In fact, many of us Venezuelans think he's purposely allowing crime to flourish so as to leave the masses too worried about their own personal safety to notice how he continues to consolidate power within his own hands.
A huge portion of the Venezuelan left is against Chávez (Cf. figures such as Pompeyo Márquez, Teodoro Petkoff, Colette Capriles and Oswaldo Barreto, to name just a few), and this includes the vast majority of Venezuelan poets & writers.
Venezuela is facing an unprecedented crime wave that continues to take the lives of the rich, poor & middle class indiscriminately, along with a shortage of basic food items such as corn meal, coffee, milk, chicken, meat as well as basic medicines. Public schools are being turned into centers of indoctrination based on the outdated Cuban model and the nation's infrastructure is crumbling, while Chávez uses his petrodollars (which he handles without any oversight from congress, as though they were his own property) to buy allegiances abroad. Thanks to Chávez, Cuba's reactionary military dictatorship continues to survive.
Sorry to have to introduce myself with such a dreadful topic. If my comment is too intrusive, feel free to erase it. I just wanted to point out that the notion of Chávez being a socialist is inaccurate. Venezuela has a long & sordid tradition of military governments, one we haven't been able to learn from yet, unfortunately.
--Guillermo Parra
Hi Guillermo,
Thank you for your insightful comment. It's very difficult in the United States to get cogent news on the situation in Venezuela. Coverage in the American news outlets and in the Cuban-dominated Hispanic outlets is virulently anti-Chavez, but doesn't delve into the details of what is making Chavez's dictatorial presidency so unpalatable to the Venezuelan people. It's very refreshing to hear a detailed account of what exactly is happening in Venezuela.
I used the term socialist as short-hand for Chavez's official policy stance, not for the actions carried out by him or by his government his government. What can be said about Chavez that is positive in the context of the Colombian situation is that the FARC, also an organization that is socialist only in name, trusts him and is willing to negotiate the release of people who have been Kidnapped and in FARC custody for years now. Part of my intent with this post was to make the point that there can be no Colombian peace negotiations without bringing all groups to the table, including the FARC, the narcotraffickers, the paramilitaries, the American government, and the Colombian government.
One of the problems you currently have in Latin America is that you've got the Catholic Opus Dei-backed Uribe on one side, currently the only hard right president in the region, who believes it is his mission to be the voice of the right in Latin America. He is willing to take as much money from the U.S. and as much covert military support from the paramilitaries as they'll give him (and the paramilitaries rain the same style of terror down on the Colombian people that the FARC do, except that they have a right wing policy agenda). And then you have grandiloquent, half-crazy Chavez on the "left," who becomes more paranoid and power-mad as his term goes on. I hear you on Venezuela's long and sordid tradition of military governments; we in Colombia have a long and sordid tradition of American puppet governments. And no, we haven't learned yet, either.
Again, thank you for your insight.
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