The FARC guerillas: Environmental Protectors or Villians?

FARC guerrillas: Environmental criminals, defenders or both?

The FARC's demobilization was supposed to be a boon for the environment, as coca leaf planting dropped and the guerrillas were transformed from environmental depredators to environmental defenders.

However, deforestation in Colombia has accelerated, and, if we're to believe them, in the FARC Colombia's jungles lost important defenders.

In the areas where the FARC guerrillas were the de-facto government, they claim that they prohibited deforestation, banned polluting into rivers, and controlled hunting.

An oil pipeline bombed allegedly by the FARC
guerrillas in February 2013.

Many of those policies were not only to protect the environment, however: They also protected the FARC forces. Intact forests hid the guerrillas from Colombia's military. And keeping trash out of rivers avoided tell-tale clues of the guerrillas' whereabouts.

On the other hand, the FARC certainly committed wholesale environmental depredations, by protecting drug crops which caused widespread deforestation, and sponsored illegal mines, which devastated countless river valleys. The FARC also bombed petroleum pipelines, poisoning rivers, jungles and cities' drinking water.

But one thing which seems clear is that, whether or not they intended it, the FARC's terrorism, kidnapping and extortion scared potential exploiters out of Colombia's remote regions. With Colombia's internal conflict winding down, businesses and farmers invaded virgin areas, accelerating deforestation. Between 2015 and 2016, deforestation increased by a terrifying 44%, and appears set to continue accelerating.

At the same time, cocaine production, one cause of deforestation, which was supposed to decline with the guerrillas' demobilization, has also accelerated.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Memory, and a Warning

Tables and photos on Plaza Bolivar today memorialize murdered members of the Union Patriotica political party.

Supporters of the Union Patriotica political party held a memorial on Plaza Bolivar today honoring the 3,000 to 5,000 members of the party who were assassinated in the late 1980s and early '90s in what is remembered as the 'genocide of the Union Patriotica.'

The U.P., founded in 1985, was linked to the FARC, and many saw it as the guerrillas' tentative effort to integrate into Colombia's political system. The killings, carried out by right-wing paramilitaries support by the regular Colombian military, ended that initiative. 

The U.P. killings carry a special resonance today as the FARC guerrillas demobilize and integrate into society. Although the paramilitary groups formally demobilized in the mid-2000s, many people claim they continue operating in remote parts of Colombia. 

Ironically, the FARC carried out their own political 'genocide' in the early 1990s against demobilized members of another leftist guerrilla group, the Ejercito Popular de Liberacion, EPL, who had formed a political party. In the best Stalinist fashion, the FARC called them traitors to the guerrilla movement and proceeded to murder about 200 ex-EPL members.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Fiscalía's New Museum

Inside Bogotá's newest museum - the Fiscalia's.

Add to Bogotá's memorable museums its newest one: The Fiscalía's.

Carlos Lehder.

Yep, seriously. The Fiscalia, or Attorney General, the agency charged with accusing and prosecuting criminals, has played a key role in the biggest dramas in Colombia's recent decades, many of which are on display in the new museum. Most impressively, the museum also includes the government's own sins.

The museum is also unintentionally a testament to the violence, corruption and general mayhem which drug prohibitionism has inflicted on Colombia. Not surprisingly, one subject the museum does not touch is decriminalization - despite its demonstrated success - because it would take away the Fiscalia's business.

Everybody's heard of Pablo Escobar, but many fewer know the name Carlos Lehder - even tho he was crazier and perhaps even richer than Escobar. Lehder admired both John Lennon and Adolf Hitler. He tried starting his own populist political party. And he even bought a Caribbean island, kicked off the inhabitants and used it to party and stockpile cocaine. But he was so unstable that Escobar supposedly betrayed him to the DEA. Lehder is still rotting away in a U.S. federal prison.

Model of an early drug-smuggling sub.

Supposedly, Escobar bought a used Soviet submarine to smuggle cocaine north, but never actually used it. Today, drug cartels build home-made diesel submarines and even aquatic drones, load them with cocaine and send the drug north.

Martyred Justice Minister
Rodrigo Lara Bonillo.

Another less-remembered character of the era was the crusading Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara Bonillo, who prosecuted members of the Medellin cartel and was gunned down for it in Bogotá in 1984. His killing triggered the war between the government and Esocbar.

In the end, the leaders of the less-famous Cali cartel were captured and extradited to U.S. prisons, where some still remain. In contrast, many Medellin cartel leaders gave themselves up and received short sentences in Colombia - despite being much more murderous.

A jet ski which supposedly
belonged to Pablo Escobar.

Both the Medellin and Cali cartels were destroyed during the 1990s, and the paramilitaries and most guerrillas have also since disbanded. Yet, today Colombia probably exports record amounts of cocaine.

Bloque de Busqueda members looking at Esocbar's corpse
on a Medellin rooftop in 1993.

However, foreigners, particularly those recently arrived in Colombia, may not recognize other episodes - such as the Proceso 8000.

In the Proceso 8000, Liberal Party Pres. Ernesto Samper's (1994-98) presidential campaign was discovered to have received money from the Cali cocaine cartel.

The investigation brought the conviction of other government officials, but Samper himself was found 'neither guilty nor innocent' by a Congress - altho today few doubt he knew about the dirty money. It led to Washington canceling Samper's U.S. Visa - a huge embarrasment for a close ally - and the U.S. The episode was named after a folder containing key documents - altho I did not see that folder in the museum.

Cali cartel leaders on their
way to prison in the U.S.

One might trace Colombia's rejection of its traditional political parties and the eventual election of Pres. Uribe partially to the Proceso 8000 scandal. After Samper, came Pastrana's failed negotiation with the FARC, and then Uribe's U.S.-backed military offensive against the FARC, which many believe forced them to the bargaining table - albeit at a huge cost in human rights. The hard-right Uribe did not come from either of the two traditional political parties.

Display about the FARC guerrillas.

After the end of the Cali and Medellin cartels, the violence and narcotrafficking didn't let up. Colombia still had to deal with the socialist FARC and ELN guerrillas, which were born in the 1960s, and their right-wing paramilitary enemies.

A captured FARC document listing weapons,
including gun cartridges and explosives.

The government didn't defeat any of these groups. The paramilitaries demobilized during the mid-2000s, receiving up to 8-year terms, despite horrific crimes. The government also negotiated a controversial demobilization deal with the FARC and is now talking to the ELN.

FARC propaganda.

A laptop belonging to FARC leader 'Mono Jojoy' recovered
after he was killed in a government bombardment in 2010.

Probably the darkest chapter in recent Colombia history was paramilitarism - the right-wing death squads organized by landowners with government and military collaboration, which carried out many massacres, often of campesinos, including women and children, based only on suspicion of sympathy for the guerrillas.

The jeep driven by police investigating crimes in
1989 in Santander Department. 

One of the more notorious of the massacres carried out by paramilitaries with collaboration from the regular military was that of La Riochela, in 1989 in Santander Department. Fifteen judicial investigators had traveled to a remote area to investigate killings. Paramilitary fighters stopped them and cold bloodedly murdered twelve of them under orders from a Medellin cartel leader and with support from the regular military. After the killings, the 'paras' hid their weapons in a military base.

Victims of the La Rochela massacre.

Yet another dark chapter involving the regular military were the 'false positives' killings during the

Uribe government. At that time, the military gave military units rewards of bonuses and time off for killing guerrillas. Some units responded by kidnapping poor young men, killing them and disguising them as guerrillas in order to collect the rewards. The killings received national attention when a group of young men were kidnapped from Soacha, in south Bogotá, and later found dead near the Venezuelan border, labeled as guerrillas.

An exhumation kit for buried corpses.

Running thru the museum's displays, of course, is the subject of drug trafficking, which has helped finance nearly all of Colombia's violent groups (and some non-violent ones).

A cocaine.making lab. Lots of chemicals involved. Cocaine is niether green nor organic.

And cocaine can and has been smuggled inside nearly everything.

Coffee beans with cocaine inside.

'Candies' used for smuggling cocaine.

Colombian clock used for smuggling cocaine.

Pool balls, used for smuggling cocaine.

A car tire used for smuggling cocaine.

Unsurprisingly, the museum does not touch the subject of decriminilizing drugs, a policy which has produced lots of benefits when tried in Portugal. That doesn't surprise, because such a policy would reduce the Fiscalia's business.

The Museo de la Fiscalia is located in this building on Carrera 13 just south of Calle 19, in central Bogotá.

You can leave your bike in the parking lot across the street. Admission is free. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Question

On October 2, Colombians will vote up or down on the peace agreement with the FARC guerrillas.

However, the question on the ballot will ask something a bit different.

"Do you support the final agreement to terminate the conflict and build a stable and durable peace?"

Marching for the SI vote on Carrera Septima in Bogotá.

The referendum question doesn't mention the guerrillas, because the government know that would generate lots of public rejection. And, whether the deal will really end the conflict is very dubious. The smaller ELN guerrilla group has not entered negotiations, and a grab-bag of criminal groups and right-wing paramilitaries are still out there, eager to swoop in and occupy the FARC's territories and take over their drug trafficking, illegal mines and other businesses. In fact, El Tiempo reports that the ELN and criminal bands are already moving in.

Colombia, sadly, has structural problems which have scarred its history with violence and won't likely go away thanks to a few signatures and FARC guerrillas' turning in their weapons. The country has huge areas with little government presence and fortunes in illegal money waiting to be scooped up. And its high poverty rate and lack of good jobs - particularly in rural areas - supplies many unemployed young men willing to risk their lives and freedom by joining violent, illegal organizations.

But the government is determined to see the peace deal approved, in part because Pres. Santos' legacy is riding on it. Thus, the 'biased referendum question,' as La Silla Vacia suggests. Most of the rest of the Colombian media, which is cheering for a SI vote, naturally ignores this issue.

La Silla Vacia also points out that the election's rules are tilted in favor of the government and the SI vote. In particular, government resources such as telephones and vehicles can be used to campaign, and since the Santos administration favors the SI, they'll be used mostly that way.

The peace deal also has severe flaws, to which the government and media has given little attention. The most glaring of these are the human rights issues. FARC members who've committed grave crimes will have undergo only a mostly symbolic punishment just as long as they confess their crimes. These people will even be eligible to serve in parliament, where the FARC will have ten guaranteed seats.

Despite the flaws and the biased question, the peace deal may be a good thing for Colombia, if it at least reduces levels of violence. But nobody should expect it to cure all the nation's ills. Colombia still has lots of work to do.

While the biased question may help SI win, it also undermines the referendum's legitimacy and may make the outcome less legitimate in the eyes of Colombians and international observers.



By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The FARC vs. the People

A soldier and his bomb-sniffing dog examine an electrical tower destoryed by the FARC guerrillas. (Photo; Semana)

The FARC guerrillas like to formally call themselves the FARC-EP, the 'Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Army of the People.'

But the FARC have long attacked those people they pretend to defend, stealing from and extorting them, kidnapping them, kidnapping their children to turn them into private soldiers, driving them off of their land and even massacring them.

However, over the last two months, as the peace talks in Havana have bogged down, the FARC have escalated their attacks on both the military and common Colombians: the guerrillas have murdered policemen in cold blood; blown up electrical towers, plunging cities into darkness; and halted oil trucks and poured the petroleum onto the ground, polluting rivers and poisoning cities' water supplies.

Why would the guerrillas do this? Perhaps they want to force the government to agree to a cease fire, or to slow down the negotiations even more, to enable the guerrilla fronts to rake in milions more from the drug trade, or to enable the guerrilla commanders to spend more time in lovely, relaxing Havana. However, the attacks seem to have backfired. Instead, pressure is growing on Pres. Santos to set a deadline by which to sign a peace agreement, or else.

Or, as one commentator suggested, the guerrillas may just want to keep their fighters busy - even if that means preying on civilians.

Whatever their motives, the guerrillas are once again displaying their own moral bankruptcy, while destroying the dreams of peace for all Colombians.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Breaking Point for Peace?

Semana magazine reports a plummeting support for the peace process.

Suddenly, the peace process doesn't look so strong.

For the past year, the government-FARC negotiations in Havana have barely advanced - and then came the FARC's massacre of 10 soldiers in El Cauca.

Pessimism surges.

Now, public support for the talks, as well as Santos' presidency, has tumbled. From about 70% public support in March, today only 55% of Colombians support the talks, while opposition has surged from 31% to 44%. Perhaps even more worrying for the talks, almost 90% of Colombians believe that the guerrillas should go to prison for their crimes, something which the FARC leaders oppose. Nearly two-thirds of people want deadlines, something which appears untenable for the drawn-out talks.

Altogether 69% of Colombians now feel pessimistic about the negotiations, while only 29% express optimism.

Undoubtedly, Santos will persevere with the negotiations. After all, they got him reelected and will define his legacy (and even his family's).

While Santos' support falls, that of ex-Pres. Alvaro Uribe, leader of the opposition in Congress and fervent critic of the negotiations, has surged to 57%.

However, if opposition keeps rising, will the results have any legitimacy? Can the resulting agreement be ratified by Congress, a referendum or even a Constitutional Convention?

Support drops.

Two-thirds of Colombians want deadlines on the negotiations.

Almost 90% want the guerrillas to go to prison.

Tough times for Santos.

References:

Gran Encuesta Colombia Opina: favorabilidad de Santos cayó al 29%

Radiografía colombiana
By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Are the FARC Capable of Peace?

Soldiers carry the corpse of one of their companions killed by the FARC in El Cauca this week.
(Photo: BBC)

The FARC's killing 11 soldiers in El Cauca this week makes little sense strategically, and none politically.

The soldiers, part of anti-drug trafficking unit, were resting at the time and killed using long-range weapons.

The FARC leaders clearly want the peace talks in Havana to succeed, which is one reason why they declared a unilateral cease fire last December. But this apparently unprovoked ambush imperils the talks' progress. Pres. Santos already ordered a resumption of air attacks on the guerrillas, altho, surprisingly, he did not suspend the peace talks.

Buenos Aires, in El Cauca Department.
(Image from Wikipedia)

But the soldiers' killings will harden public sentiment against the guerrillas, including that of hard-liners within the military, and will give ex-Pres. Alvaro Uribe and other right-wingers more ammunition against the peace talks. And the guerrilla leaders' number one goal doesn't appear to be social justice or land redistribution, but soft terms for themselves in any peace deal, despite their innumerable human rights violation. This latest massacre puts that further out of reach.

I can think of only two possible reasons for this action:

One, that the FARC disastrously misread national sentiment following the April 9 pro-peace marches, in which some guerrilla sympathizers called for a bilateral ceasefire. Perhaps the guerrillas hoped that committing an atrocity like this one would motivate more Colombians to support the ceasefire to stop the killing.

Instead, in the same way that Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor even while Japanese-U.S. negotiations were being held rallied Americans behind FDR's declaration of war, these latest killings seems to have only generated more anti-guerrilla anger.

Could the guerrilla leadership have read public sentiment so incorrectly? I doubt it.

The more likely and even more worrying explanation is that the guerrillas have lost control of some of their 'fronts,' whose leaders may aim to sabotage the peace talks. The attack occurred in the municipality of Buenos Aires, in El Cauca Department, located near the Pacific coast and the Ecuadorean border. The region is valuable because of illegal mining and cocaine exportation routes.

Could it be that local FARC leaders, aware that a peace deal would extinguish their huge illicit incomes, have made this their way of trying to kill the talks - in defiance of the guerrillas' top leadership?

If my second hypothesis is correct, it bodes badly for the negotiations, since many local guerrilla leaders have their own motives for wanting to preserve the conflict and its illegal incomes.

If the guerrilla leadership cannot pull those far-flung units into line, then a peace deal may not be merely far away, but impossible.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Lessons of the EPL

An EPL fighter. (Photo: Semana)

When someone calling themselves the EPL issued a communique a few days ago expressing its interest in joining the FARC-government peace talks in Havana, many Colombia observers probably scratched their heads.

After all, Colombia is only supposed to have two guerrilla groups: the Revolutionary Armed Forces

'Combating, we will win.' The EPL's logo.

of Colombia, or FARC, who recently commemorated their 50th anniversary, and the smaller National Liberation Army, or ELN, which is in talks about peace talks. But the EPL, or Popular Liberation Army? Didn't they disappear years ago?

In fact, Colombia did once have an EPL guerrilla group, but whether it still does is controversial. And that story illustrates the troubles of negotiating with and demobilizing guerrilla groups.

The EPL was founded in 1967, and grew to have some 4,000 fighters. It specialized in extortion, kidnapping, cattle rustling and money laundering. In its formal philosophy, the EPL adhered to the ultra-Stalinist ideas of Albania's brutal communist dictator Enver Hoxha. In 1991, weakened by attacks from the military and right-wing paramilitaries, some 2,500 EPL fighters demobilized, handing over 850 rifles and founding a political party named Hope, Peace and Liberty, or EPL by its Spanish initials.

'Megateo' in front of an EPL banner.

But the EPL's troubles weren't over. It now became the target of both the left and right. The FARC, calling the demobilized EPL fighters traitors to the revolutionary cause, deliberately murdered several hundred of them. (Ironically, at the same time, members of the FARC-associated Patriotic Union party were being murdered by right-wing forces. The U.P. martyrs have been memorialized, the EPL victims forgotten.) Then, in 1993, EPL defiant leader Francisco Caraballo was captured by the military, and in 1996 one of the group's few remaining fronts turned itself in to the military, while another joined a paramilitary group, supposedly the guerrillas' sworn enemies.

After that, the EPL mostly evaporated, except for a few clashes with the military and the 2006 kidnapping of a businessman and politician's son by people claiming to be EPL members.

However, in 2013 Víctor Ramón Navarro, or Megateo, presented himself to reporters in Catatumbo as head of the EPL's Libardo Toro's front.

To United States and Colombian authorities, however, know Navarro basically as a drug trafficker, Semana magazing wearing gold rings encrusted with diamonds and emeralds.

Want an easy 9 billion pesos?
A wanted poster for 'Alias Megateo.'

for whom they offer millions of dollars in rewards. And his sincerity as a communist revolutionary was called into question when a photo appeared of him wearing a thick gold necklace and he showed up for an interview with

And reporters with Semana magazine also wondered about Navarro's guerrilla legits when his 50 fighting men appeared wearing new uniforms similar to the Colombian military's and carrying brand new Israeli-made Galil rifles. Who or what was sponsoring these people?

Now, the EPL guerrillas want to join the peace talks. But do they still exist, and are they really guerrillas, or a criminal band calling themselves guerrillas?

Some say that the trouble started back in 1991, when the EPL only partially demobilized. And that may have been in part due to the violent hostility from the FARC, who evidently didn't want to lose a guerrilla ally.

With the government-FARC peace negotiations advancing in Havana, the EPL's story illustrates the many ways which a peace deal can go wrong. Does the FARC's central command really control all of its units? Might some guerrilla fronts refuse the peace deal, or morph into violent criminal bands stripped of ideology? Could a guerrilla demobilization trigger another episode of murderous revenge taking?

Meanwhile, someone will have to decide whether the so-called EPL guerrillas deserve the amnesty offered to political groups which have resorted to violence, or should be fought and incarcerated as simple drug traffickers.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Attacking the Peace Talks from the Left

'A peace as an excuse for perpetuating inequality.'

Pro-rebellion posters cover a mural showing
a land-mine victim. Land mines, which
kill and maim many civilians, are
planted by Colombia's guerrillas.  

'And the solution is -rebellion.' These posters appeared today in Bogotá's Teusaquillo district denouncing the FARC.-government peace negotiations going on now in Habana, Cuba.

Until now, most criticisms of the negotiations haves come from the right, which labels them give-aways to the guerrillas and charges that violators of human rights will get off with only symbolic punishments.

In contrast, these anonymous posters, with their calls for 'liberation' and denunciations of inequality, are attacking the talks from the far left, as failing to solve society's ills. Their view seems to be that the solution is rebellion - a new 'revolution'. Does Colombia really want to rewind itself to the 1960s?

'In rebellion, LatinAmerica recovers its existence.'

'A same past, a same enemy, a same possibility: Liberation.'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Good-bye Land Mines?

A campesino who lost his right leg to a land mine.
(Photo: Campaña Colombiana Contra Minas)

The other morning, Edilberto and Marlon Alexis González Mina, ages 9 and 10, were walking to school near the village of Tandil Alto Mira in Nariño Department, when they stepped on a land mine.

The explosion killed the two boys, making them the latest of the 11,000 people injured and killed by mines since 1990 in Colombia, the only nation in the Western Hemisphere where land mines are still being planted. Colombia is the world's third-most mined nation, behind only Afghanistan and Cambodia.

Colombia's guerrillas plant home-made land mines to protect themselves from pursuing soldiers and to guard coca leaf fields. But they don't return to remove the devices, so the mines remain waiting silently to kill or maim the unfortunate person (or animal) who steps on them.

So it was positive news ten days ago that the military and FARC guerrilla negotiators agreed to work together to find and remove the thousands of land mines after they sign a peace treaty.

A mural on an abandoned Bogotá building
memorializes land mine victims.

More than a few 'ifs' and 'buts' remain, however. The peace agreement looks likely, but is no sure thing. And neither is the obedience of the many guerrilla units to directives from their leaders. Meanwhile, the ELN guerrillas, who are not in the peace negotiations, presumably continue planting land mines. And, in any case, the guerrillas can't possibly know the locations of all of their mines, which a government official estimates are distributed across 688 municipalities.

The guerrillas fashion their mines using explosives sometimes laced with screws and feces in order to maximize the injuries and infection. These artesanal mines can wait underground for 50 years for someone to tragically step on the wrong spot.

Colombia may finally free itself of the nightmare of land-mines, but not for a while yet.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours