The quasi-democratic system in Colombia has not prioritized investment for the impoverished in any form, in fact, nearly 80% of its funding through Plan Colombia is directly earmarked for fumigation, advanced training for its special forces and continued anti-Farc/Eln operations. Like Central America, the peace process in Colombia has also been long and difficult, yielding ineffective results since Pastrana left office. Uribe hasn’t sought open channels of negotiation with either the Farc or Eln to the same extent as he has directed open aggession against both groups and citizens of the countryside through his official military and his paramilitary AUC.

Good point on identifying the indolence felt in the country, hence the plummeting voter turnout rates of the past two elections, falling below 46% in 2006. This, however, is not an indication of strong belief in national structures, as low voter turnout is directly proportionate to a waning confidence in their state establishments. People don’t vote when they loss hope in a flawed system, hence a continued decrease in polling stats, just like the US or anywhere else where democracy is failing the people while strengthening corporate allegiance.

The problem with terrorism and violence in Colombia will not come to an end if the Farc and Eln are eliminated. State oppression was a regular occurrence long before the Farc rose from the blood-stained soils through the 1950′s and officially entered the socio-political spectrum in1966. If the Farc are eliminated from the equation, the state will once again have regained complete hegemony over the people.

Have you forgotten your history? Insurgent groups are a product of state oppression, which is why we don’t see these entities in countries like Switzerland and Norway which have governments that take care of the people. However, once you look at the long list of insurgent groups in Latin America, and why they made a stand to begin with, one can only deduce state neglegence as the primary culprit.

It seems that you completely misunderstand the conflict in Colombia, or at least you’ve established your opinion based on what the oligarchic-controlled press has released to the international public.

THANKS FOR YOUR HELP

It is clear that the Farc has lost any political credibility and ideological justification – not that pursuing an elitist guerrilla strategy was anything to be supported in the first place – but it is undeniable that the Farc still have some influence among those Colombians who have never seen any social investment by Liberal and Conservative (and much less Uribista) administrations.

Progressive social programs that redistribute wealth and land, and that also involve the democratisation of Colombian society and the participation of those excluded from it – particularly the 3 million desterrados and potentially the 4 million who have emigrated or fled the country – would be a start in ending poverty and inequality, and hopefully, any remaining attraction the guerrillas have.

Military offensives have consistently failed, and as the US is finding out in Iraq, are likely to perpetuate violent resistance. The Polo Democrático offer an alternative to the state’s violence, to the paramilitaries’ violence (which, despite your claims to the contrary, receive the support of 25 per cent of Colombians, while only 6 per cent think their massacres and murders are a ‘problem’), and to the guerrilla’s violence.

It is President Uribe’s favourite tactic to associate any opposition to his authoritarian militarisation policies with the guerrillas, but this intolerant attitude is having less and less effect. You say that it is not the right time for the left, but fortunately Uribistas don’t get to choose what the right time is – Colombians are starting to decide that for themselves.

The constant attempts of the Colombian right to divert attention to Venezuela don’t work either – it was the Venezuelan right who tried a coup – and it is the left who are winning elections after elections in Latin America. As to your claims about ‘freedoms’ in Colombia, I assume what happened to the Unión Patriótica, or the attempted assassinations of Polo Senators mean nothing to you. I have already written on Colombia’s ‘free press’ here:

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/06/club-colombia/

The ‘Another Colombia is possible’ article is a comment on the possibility that this country could finally turn away from violence, dismiss the failed imported policies of the United States and join the rest of the continent in the 21st Century, and it is this possibility that has the Uribistas desperately trying, as your one dimensional comment shows, to associate with terrorists a democratic, progressive and rising political movement.

After Gaitán’s assassination, sectarian violence and the elitist ‘bipartisan’ National Front governments either suppressed or forced to the margins any further expression of progressive politics until the Unión Patriótica organised in the Eighties – only for their activists to be massacred in their thousands by the narcos and the paramilitaries.

The Polo is just the latest organised political expression of Colombians’ desire for progressive social change, but the millions of votes they have achieved, and the thousands of activists that they have, are just one aspect of how people here are organising for ‘another Colombia’.

For much more information on the indigenous, civil rights and community and barrio organising movements, go to:

http://www.actualidadcolombiana.org/

and:

http://colombia.indymedia.org/

People can’t speculate or write mere lies about such a difficult country to understand. Paul Haste completely misunderstands the whole Colombian problem, siding blindly with the left and attacking greatly the right, exactly the roots of Colombia’s 50 year’s struggles. You don’t talk of possibilities of coup d’etats or dictatorships in Colombia nowadays. That’s not possible there, as in such other countries, eg, Venezuela, can happen. You don’t speak of leftist parties being harrassed or silenced by official authorities, in a country with the best and most sophisticated system of speech of all South America. Private channels, magazines and newspapers are a proof of that. As long as the Colombian left sides with the people and not sympathizes with the “false left” that is FARC or ELN, no chance they’ll have on winning the elections, or even to contribute with the end of its internal war. So, my question is: With whom are they really and ideologically sided?