The Two Truths of Miguel Ángel Beltrán

'No more persecution.' A demonstration this week on the
Universidad Nacional's campus in favor of
Beltrán and other 'political prisoners.'

Miguel Ángel Beltrán was a sociology professor at the Universidad Nacional's Bogotá campus. And, unsurprisingly, he was very leftist. But was he also a secret guerrilla agent? Or just a persecuted professor?

When the Colombian military bombed Ecuadorean territory in 2008 and killed FARC 'foreign minister' Raul Reyes, it reported finding documents showing that Beltrán was a FARC agent named Jaime Cienfuegos.

Beltrán was arrested and deported while traveling in Mexico and spent two years in a Colombian prison, accused of writing guerrilla documents and recruiting students for the guerrillas on the university campus. However, in 2011 a judge absolved Beltrán, concluding that the computer documents could have been manipulated and therefore could not be used as evidence in court.

That didn't end suspicions about Beltrán's FARC connections, particularly because when he was

Miguel Angel Beltrán arrested.

arrested in Mexico, authorities reported that he was carrying a flash drive with FARC documents. Those alleged documents included messages between 'Jaime Cienfuegos' and FARC leader Raul Reyes which indicated that Cienfuegos' international travels coincided precisely with Beltrán's own travels.

And the law wasn't thru with Beltrán. Last year, Colombia's Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez ordered Beltrán stripped of his professorship and banned from holding public office. But Ordoñez, an extreme conservative, could hardly be expected to consider Beltrán's case objectively. And this August, while traveling in Panama, authorities detained Beltrán and deported him back to Colombia. Beltrán was quickly freed this time.

Graffiti over a Universidad Nacional entrance says
'We are all Miguel Angel Beltrán.'

Beltrán clearly shares some ideas with the FARC. In contrast with the governments of Colombia, the United States and the European Union, Beltrán refuses to call the FARC terrorists, but rather "political actors" and "a response to state violence."

Such opinions are not, of course, illegal - altho they may cause some right-wing politicians such as Orodñez and ex-Pres. Alvaro Uribe to leap to certain conclusions about Beltrán's allegiances.

Whatever Beltrán's true actions and identity, he's well on his way into the pantheon of heroes and martyrs for the country's left. And another example of how unclear the dividing line can be between combatants and sympathizers in Colombia's long conflict.

Pro-FARC graffiti on the Universidad Nacional's Bogotá campus.

A student walks past a pro-Beltran mural on the Universidad Nacional's Bogotá campus. 

A poster celebrating Beltrán's 'absolution.'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Jackboots for Liberty!

All march in lockstep for freedom against fascism.

This evening I encountered this 'anti-fascist' march on Seventh Avenue. An army of muscular young mostly guys, masked, booted, uniformed and disciplined. They yelled in unison, waved their flags decorated with reverse swastikas and anarchy symbols, halted and charged forward in phalanxes. Thru the back of my mind ran newsreels of jackbooted Nazi Brownshirts.

"Down with the fascist government! Antifascists to power!"

When I snapped photos, they challenged me, several times.

"You can't take pictures of us. We have our own photographers."

"This is a public event in a public place," I said. "And this is a free country."

The guy didn't question my statement about it being a free country.

"In the past, people have made bad use of photographs," he told me. "I recommend that you don't take pictures."

Confronted with a bunch of masked, burly young men, I retreated and took photographs discretely from further away - a completely pointless exercise with my cheap little camera. But the guy's warning told me more about them than did their banners. What sort of a group believes it has the right to dictate how it is portrayed? That only its own version of reality counts? A fascist one.

The next time I approached the march and started snapping, the anti-fascists called another enforcer. By this time, tho, I'd thought about things and come up with an argument.

"Have you taken pictures?" he asked in the tone of someone used to being obeyed. "That's prohibited. Show me the photos in your camera."

"You know," I said, "you have a very fascist attitude."

I didn't put the camera down. I felt nervous. But perhaps the approach of the city's anti-riot police, employees of this supposedly fascist government, who were escorting these protesters down Bogotá's most important avenue at rush hour, gave me security.

Many people have observed that the political extremes often intersect in their own forms of totalitarianism, as in Hitler and Stalin, generally disastrous for their own peoples and nearby nations. For another example, look next door at Venezuela, where a supposedly leftist president has eliminated checks and balances, repressed the independent media and just said that he'll stay in power until 2019, at least. (He was first elected in 1999.)

I once had a discussion with a Colombian neo-Nazi. (Absurd on its face in a nation with very few people of Aryan descent and where most people are of mixed ethnic heritage.) They are of course explicitly racist, altho they deny hating anybody, and spout wild conspiracy theories about Barack Obama being a communist agent. Today's supposed anti-fascists seemed little different, besides the swastikas being flipped over. Despite their anti-racist rhetoric, I didn't see a singly non-white face in their ranks, which says something. And, ir they want to dictate who will photograph their march, can you imagine how they'd dictate the media if they ever reached power?

Colombia's government certainly has issues with freedom of speech and repression of dissidents. But the anti-fascists' own march, down Bogotá's principal avenue, puts the lie to their claims about the government and says something about their own ideological blinders.

One of the anti-fascist's flyers told more about them then their banners did. Alongside a drawing of a muscular man glaring at the reader and readying a punch, it said: 'In the neighborhood anti-Nazis rule.' It was written by the Kennedy Anti-Fascist Front, whose slogan is 'Commitment, Revolution and Liberty,' the words encircling the image of a muscular, growling dog readying a punch and flanked by the symbols of anarchy and communism. Confusing, since communism has almost always meant uniformity and obedience, while anarchy has never led to equality.

Kennedy is a huge, mostly poor area in South Bogotá, with lots of crime and violence. These 'anti-fascists' look to me like yet another urban tribe, a gang of kids who define themselves by their enemies and mistake hate and group cohesion for ideology.

By Mike Ceaser of Bogotá Bike Tours