Colombia

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Petro Advocates for Colombia’s Energy Transition


Petro's program during his presidential campaign included moving "from an extractivist economy to a productive economy." Jul. 12, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@VoiceSocialist

Published 12 July 2022 (8 hours 29 minutes ago)

Colombia's President-elect Gustavo Petro warned Colombia's leading oil company Ecopetrol about continuing an energy transition plan toward clean energies.

"Do not hold us back. The popular vote is a mandate. I want to produce a consensus, but not bend the popular vote that wants clean energy," Colombia's president-elect Gustavo Petro said via Twitter.

Petro's program during his presidential campaign included moving "from an extractivist economy to a productive economy," as well as stopping new oil exploration in Colombia as part of the transition to clean energy.

Such a project focused on the move to clean energy has raised economic concerns. In the days following Petro's election, the oil company's shares fell sharply on fears that Ecopetrol would be affected by these measures.

Ecopetrol's Shareholders' Assembly recently approved a change to extend the term of its Board of Directors, which includes government representatives, from two to four years. Thus, the company's management will be independent of the country's political cycles, according to an article in La República newspaper quoted by Petro in his tweet.


Don't hold us. The popular vote is mandatory. I want to produce a consensus, but not bend the popular vote that wants clean energy. The public owner freely chooses its members in the companies that represent it. It is the representation of the people.

In this regard, Petro said that "the public owner freely chooses its members in the companies that represent it. It is the representation of the people."

The dollar has been at record levels in Colombia for several days, and reaching the 5,000 peso mark seems to be not so far away. World markets are currently highly vulnerable due to fears of a recession in the U.S. economy, which could spread to the rest of the world, affecting mainly foreign exchange operations in Colombia.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Pet ... -0024.html

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They denounce the murder of social leader 101 in Colombia in 2022


Added to the assassination of social leaders are 53 massacres that have claimed the lives of 185 people, and 24 former signatories of the Peace Agreement have been killed. | Photo: New Revolution
Published 13 July 2022

With the murder of Jaime Losada, there are 101 social leaders killed in Colombia so far in 2022; and 1,328 since the signing of the Peace Agreement in 2016.

The Institute for Development and Peace (Indepaz) of Colombia denounced this Wednesday the assassination of another social leader, this time in the municipality of Puerto Guzmán, department of Putumayo.

This is Jaime Losada, who served as a member of the Conciliatory Committee of the Community Action Board of the Costa Nueva village, and who, according to reports made in his community, had been missing for more than four days.

Indepaz details that this Tuesday, July 12, Losada's body was found lifeless on the banks of the Seville River, without knowing details about his death.

For its part, the Ombudsman's Office had issued an early warning in municipalities of several Colombian departments in the face of risks caused by the arbitrary presence of illegal armed factions and their interference in community affairs, enforcing their orders by force.

With a presence in the department are the groups Front 1 Carolina Ramírez, Bolivarian Border Commands, and other local gangs, which also exert pressure and limit the autonomy of indigenous peoples, considered at risk.

With the murder of Losada, there are 101 social leaders killed in that South American country so far in 2022, and 1,328 since the signing of the Peace Agreement in 2016.

To which are added, 24 signers of the Peace Agreement also assassinated; and 53 massacres perpetrated, which have left a balance of 185 fatalities; according to data provided by Indepaz.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/denuncia ... -0005.html

Google Translator

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Colombia: FARC Dissidents Accuse Duque of Exporting Mercenaries to Kill World Leaders (+Attack on Iván Márquez)
JULY 12, 2022


Colombian President Iván Duque speaks on the sidelines of the 9th Summit of the Americas, held in Los Angeles, on June 8, 2022. Photo: AFP.

Dissidents of the now defunct armed guerrilla organization Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have accused Colombian President Iván Duque of exporting mercenaries to assassinate world leaders.

“Duque and his government not only destroyed the Havana Accords, but also dedicated themselves to exporting mercenaries to kill leaders in different parts of the world,” said the Segunda Marquetalia, a FARC dissident group, in a statement published by the Colombian magazine Cambio on Sunday, July 10.

“That is how a commando of mercenaries directed from Colombia, all of them supposedly retired military personnel—23 mercenaries—raided the residence of the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, in the early hours of July 7, 2021, and assassinated him,” the statement continued. “So far the perpetrators of the crime have been arrested, but nothing is known about the masterminds.”

The Segunda Marquetalia further stated that the Duque government has been one of the most nefarious and ineffective governments to have governed Colombia in recent times, given that during Duque’s mandate “more than 700 social leaders have been assassinated, more than 300 signatories of the peace agreement have been assassinated, protests has been repressed, and false positives have returned.”

Segunda Marquetalia leader Iván Márquez survives assassination attempt

In its statement, the Segunda Marequetalia reported that its leader Iván Márquez is alive, discarding speculations that he had been killed in an attack in Venezuela.

On June 30, the top FARC dissident leader Luciano Marín Arango, alias Iván Márquez, “was the victim of a criminal attack directed from the [Colombian] army barracks and the police commands,” but “was unharmed” and “only suffered minor injuries,” said the Segunda Marquetalia in the recently published statement.


The Segunda Marquetalia believes that US agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Duque government, were behind the attack on Márquez.

It also claimed that the assassination attempt on Márquez emplyoed “the same modus operandi” that had been used to “assassinate [former FARC leaders] El Paisa Oscar, Edilson Romaña, Gentil Duarte, and Jesús Santrich, by different military garrisons and police commands.”

Iván Márquez is the most experienced person in the Segunda Marquetalia to participate in an eventual negotiation with the government of President-elect Gustavo Petro who, in his victory speech, assured that he would work for the consolidation of “complete peace.” Petro, like Márquez, is also a historical figure in the armed insurgency in Colombia.

Márquez has a long history of political negotiation with the Colombian state. He joined the armed movement in 1985, and was part of the Peace Accords of the mid-1980s that led to the formation of the Patriotic Union. Over the next few years, thousands of members of the Patriotic Union were systematically murdered by Colombia’s police, army, and paramilitaries. The victims included two presidential candidates, eight congresspersons, about seventy councilpersons, dozens of deputies and mayors, and hundreds of trade unionists, communists, party members, and peasant leaders. Colombian courts place the number of murdered Patriotic Union members at 5,733.

In 1986, Márquez was elected as a representative to the Chamber of Deputies, but he returned to arms after the assassination of a number of his comrades. He later joined the negotiating teams of Casa Verde, in 1990; and later the dialogues in Tlaxcala, Mexico, and Caracas, Venezuela, as well as the peace processes of San Vicente del Caguán, in 1998; and Havana, Cuba, in 2012.

Márquez laid down his arms after the Peace Accords of 2016, but returned to the movement again in 2019, citing lack of security guarantees after his companion-in-arms, iconic FARC leader Jesús Santrich, was arrested for extradition to the US for alleged involvement in crimes after the signing of the Peace Accords. Márquez has since abandoned the peace process and resumed his guerrilla life. In this context, the victory of Gustavo Petro in the presidential elections has opened the door to a new attempt for achieving peace through negotiations, in which Iván Márquez is sure to participate.

This was also the first time that the Segunda Marquetalia recognized the death of Óscar Montero, better known as El Paisa, a guerrilla leader of vast military experience who was the commander of FARC’s Teófilo Forero Mobile Column.

https://orinocotribune.com/colombia-far ... n-marquez/

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Beltrán: “We are Walking Along Different Paths Towards a More Just Society”
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 12, 2022
María Fernanda Barreto



Exclusive interview with Commander Pablo Beltrán, head of the ELN Peace Delegation, regarding possible dialogues with the new Colombian government.

The presidential triumph of the Historical Pact in the last elections in Colombia, has awakened an unprecedented hope in the majority of the Colombian population and in general, in all the countries of the region, particularly in those that in the last decades have consolidated progressive or leftist processes, which saw in it a lag for the entire continent.

An enclave of imperialist terrorism and a platform for the relaunching of the Monroe Doctrine of the United States, Colombia is the only country in Our America that has not known peace since the European invasion until today.

Although some discourses intentionally try to hide it and those who fail to understand the complexity of the country refer to the internal conflict in the past tense, Colombia continues to be a country at war.

That is why one of the most important chapters of the government program presented by Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez, is the one entitled “Colombia, world power of life” which in its point 5 ,”We will leave the war behind and finally enter an era of Peace“, specifically states: “we will resume negotiations with the ELN to put an end to the existence of the armed insurgency in Colombia through political dialogue“.

Given the importance of this issue, as soon as the result of the presidential elections was announced, we decided to contact Commander Pablo Beltrán, head of the Peace Delegation of the National Liberation Army (ELN) that is still in Cuba, to conduct a brief interview with him on the subject, whose answers we received today (July 2, 2022), and which we present below.

Have you already had any kind of rapprochement with the new government of Colombia?

With the outgoing government of Duque it was not possible to develop peace negotiations, we only maintained an intermediated communication thanks to the Good Offices of the UN Mission, the Vatican and the Catholic Episcopal Conference, who have already met with the new government to inform them of our responses to their proposals on peace with the ELN.

Are they ready to resume dialogues with the Colombian State on August 8 of this year, and if so, do they expect to give continuity to what they have managed to advance since 2017 or will they start from scratch?

President Gustavo Petro has reaffirmed his commitment to give course to the Peace Process initiated with Santos and that Duque dedicated himself to shatter, we share that we must “build on what has been built”, but since it is a new Government we will have to talk to him about how these lines of continuity would be and what would be the adjustments they require.

How important does the ELN consider the role of Venezuela and Cuba in the construction of peace in Colombia?

Venezuela has supported our peace negotiations with the National Government since 1999 and in the last period it has acted as Guarantor Country, a similar role it fulfilled in the Peace Process with the former FARC; we know that this will to support the achievement of peace in Colombia is maintained by the Government of the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Likewise, Cuba has maintained its policy of support for peace in Colombia, despite the attacks it has received because of its principled position on international law.

What is your opinion of the report recently delivered by the Truth Commission?

A flank of the war is disinformation and those who develop it do so to perpetuate the war and to avoid taking responsibility for it, which is why this Final Report of the Truth Clarification Commission (CEV) is a contribution in the right direction.

Today there is less “Night and Fog”, but we are still half way to the Colombian society having full answers to big questions, such as: why is there a war, why are there still factors of recidivism, what are the two sides of the Internal Conflict, who wants and who does not want to turn the page of the war and why?

As head of the Peace Delegation of the ELN, which defines itself as a revolutionary organization, do you think that it would be enough to fulfill the government program proposed by the Historical Pact for the next four years, to think that Colombia could finally know what it means to live in Peace, or will it take more than that?

We do not see the Petro government as an enemy, our adversaries are those who oppose democratization and oppose changes in favor of the people; when we were born on July 4, 1964 we raised the anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist slogan of National Liberation and if you observe, today the second progressive wave is going to achieve greater integration of Latin America and the Caribbean, which will make us become more sovereign peoples, so we are moving forward.

From our origin we also proclaimed the struggle for Socialism, and today given the crisis of capitalism as the dominant system, the peoples of the world are fighting for peace, another model of development and a democracy that serves the vast majority, components that make up a new model of post-capitalist society, that is, we are walking along various paths towards a more just society, in peace and kind to Mother Earth.

In conclusion, when comparing our strategic objectives with the Program of the Historic Pact, we find important coincidences that make us companions on the road in this period of history.

As mentioned by our interviewee, on July 4, the ELN will celebrate 58 years of existence, which makes it the largest and oldest guerrilla organization in the continent. During this time they have held dialogues with delegations from seven different governments, the first one with President César Gaviria, then Ernesto Samper’s, Andrés Pastrana’s, continuing with the two governments of Álvaro Uribe Vélez and finally with the two governments of Juan Manuel Santos. However, that last dialogue table that had been installed in Quito, Ecuador in February 2017, had to move to Cuba, after the Ecuadorian government of Lenin Moreno renounced to continue being “Guarantor Country” so Cuba agreed to become the headquarters of those dialogues since May 2018.

In July of that year we had the opportunity to interview for the first time Comandante Pablo Beltrán, who expressed his hope that the then candidate-elect, Iván Duque would not close the doors to a political solution to the armed conflict.

But those dialogues never started and on the contrary, the protocols signed between the Colombian State and the guarantor countries were ignored, which forced the guerrilla delegation to remain in Cuba and cost that country to be included in the list of countries sponsoring terrorism by the United States.

Just today, the outgoing president of Colombia, Iván Duque ratified his pro-guerrilla position. Questioned by Semana magazine on the possibility that the new government will restart dialogues with the guerrilla organization, he said that he does not believe in the ELN, that he opposes any possibility of dialogues both with this organization and with the FARC-EP Segunda Marquetalia and, on the contrary, he boasted about the counterinsurgency military actions of his administration which, by the way, will end next August 7 with the highest unpopularity ever achieved by a Colombian president in the whole 21st century.

Although the administration that Petro and Marquez will start in a little more than a month, will have many difficulties to face the great de facto powers that perpetuate the social and armed conflict that Colombia lives in all its expressions, the possibility of initiating a real process of Peace with social justice, is today the most latent hope in the majority of the Colombian People and also, a great expectation of all Our America.

We will be writing about these de facto powers, the difficulties and challenges that the new Colombian government will face in the coming days.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... t-society/

How Black Colombia Helped to Bring the Left to Power
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JULY 12, 2022
Carlos Cruz Mosquera


Young Black activists in Buenaventura

Although mainstream media focuses on a figurehead, Colombia’s historical moment today is not just down to Gustavo Petro and his coalition’s efforts. Without taking from them what was an inspired campaign to win the electorate over with a principled programme, a decisive factor in the victory was last year’s national strike.

The heroic mobilisation of young racialised working-class youth brought the country to a standstill, bringing all of the radicals and progressives together with impassioned clamours for change. The consequences of the demonstrations are visible everywhere. There should be little doubt that without these mobilisations, where many lost their lives, we would likely not be in the historical moment we are in today.

To understand Colombia’s recent election results, we must understand the racial and class dynamics that have become somewhat obscured in more mainstream accounts. This is because we are often presented with a top-down perspective. The lowly masses, after all, are mere subjects of history, never its architects, so they will have us believe.

Last year’s mobilisations began as a narrow response to a government bill, gradually evolving into one with broader and more radical demands. The intolerable material and social conditions that racialised working-class Colombians face are what sparked the uprising and, in the process, pushed the leftist and progressive movement to accept more radical demands, and now what seemed impossible; a leftist government.

Historically, research into the roots of Colombia’s conflict has been rather narrow. Academics have often focused on a rigid ten-year timeline (1948 – 1958) and labelled this La Violencia – supposedly when the current conflict began. Further, it is often proposed this conflict arose from a feud between the liberal and conservative parties. This narrow view has played a role in shaping the situation in the country as unique – as if this conflict is innately Colombian, perhaps caused by something in our water.

In truth, we can trace the conditions that have given rise to violence and conflict to capitalist development, state formation, and, importantly, colonial legacies of power. In this broader context, the conditions of poverty, social unrest, and violence plaguing Colombian society are not unique. To some extent or another, conflicts are experienced anywhere that has been integrated into the capitalist world system.

We can trace the intensification of Colombia’s conflict to the integration of the country’s market into the world system from the middle of the 19th century. We can also trace the social relations between the different social classes to the relations of power inherited from the colonial era, which is well understood elsewhere and continues to have repercussions on social relations throughout the world today.

To put it differently, Black Colombians suffering the worst rates of poverty and violence today and racialised communities elsewhere facing similar conditions are part of the same global historical process.

In recent years in the Western world, we have seen a movement rising against the many colonial legacies in society. From the Black Lives Matter movement that exposes the way authorities target and even murder Black people to calls for statues and other symbols of the legacies of colonialism to be taken down and for this legacy’s social and economic consequences to be addressed. This movement to dismantle the legacies of colonialism has taken off in the Western world and globally.

In late April last year, young working-class Colombians went on a three-month national strike at the height of the pandemic. They, too, brought down several statues of Columbus and other colonialists. Colombia, absurdly, is named after Christopher Columbus, epitomising the legacies of colonial domination up into the present – not just in name and symbols but in the social, economic, and political realities of these communities. Black activist Leonard Renteria and other activists closed down a street during the national strike.


Black activist Leonard Renteria and other activists closed down a street during the national strike.

Displaced and terrorised from their lands by ‘development’, Black communities, especially Black women, are forced to flee to the country’s major cities, Bogota, Medellin, and Cali. Black women in cities, subsequently, form the absolute base of the most discriminated against in the labour market and society in general.

With the above as context, it is not surprising that the city of Cali was the epicentre of the national protests last year and where statistics show that state violence and repression against protesters were more likely to lead to death and disappearance. In a report released by CODHES and the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN), they show that during the protests, most of the violence took place in Cali and particularly in its Black neighbourhoods.

Colombian authorities are already known to repress protests violently. However, the data from last year’s protests highlights that Black and racialised people taking part was a factor in amping up the intensity of the violence and repression.

We must point out that it was not just the state and the traditional conservative elites eager to stamp out the protests and the movement built around them. Liberals and even some more left-leaning progressives in official positions were uninterested. The union leaders who organised the strike started to call for people to abandon the protests as, in their view, it was getting out of hand. In their view, the protests were too chaotic, disruptive, and violent, and there was no proper leadership or organisation.

Some went as far as to claim that criminal gangs led the sustained strike. The young, mostly Black, and impoverished mixed-race communities, who were protesting, argued back that you must be well organised to sustain a strike for the many weeks they did; and repeatedly voiced their political demands.

It was not that the protesters were disorganised or that they lacked serious demands; these demands were too radical to be heard by those in power and those who formed part of the official opposition to that power.

The ideological differences that came to the fore during the protests can be partly explained by the massive material and social disparities observed in the country. Black, Indigenous, and impoverished communities who came out onto the streets have less to lose from a radical transformation of the existing political and economic structures. Middle-class liberal progressives, especially those with official roles, are betting solely on institutional arrangements and official negotiations, explaining their hesitancy towards radical protests and demands.

Despite the lack of support, it is not far-fetched to argue that those who protested last year pushed the country to break with two centuries of uninterrupted elite rule. Francia Marquez, now the Vice-President-elect, joined the protests and was one of the leaders that best articulated the demands of the young racialised youth. Her political ability to garner the support of those traditionally uninterested in electoral politics is a decisive factor.


Followers of Francia Marquez. Photo: Iván Valencia

None of this should be seen as a coincidence. Marquez has lived the conditions of the most oppressed communities and therefore embodies the urgency for the radical transformation of the country. In fact, the never-before-seen turnout in majority Black and Indigenous areas of the country, the forgotten and neglected regions, secured the victory of the country’s first leftist government.

Racism and classism in combination create the unliveable material and social conditions experienced by many, perhaps most Colombians. Those conditions and those who experience them are undoubtedly spearheading the radical transformation of the country. Unlike the more cautious professional politicians surrounding her, Marquez has drawn a line between the movement towards change and neoliberal opportunists scrambling to jump on the bandwagon.

Ultimately, the surest way the new progressive government can repay the masses that brought them to power is to urgently address the historic racial and class divisions that continue to envelop the country. Anything less and those same unliveable conditions that inspired the youth to bring about today’s historic change in who governs will indeed show at the next elections, perhaps sooner.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/07/ ... -to-power/

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Colombia: 25th Peace Agreement Signatory Killed So Far in 2022


There are now 324 peace signatories murdered following the 2016 peace agreements, INDEPAZ says. Jul. 13, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@DiarioDelNorte

Published 13 July 2022

INDEPAZ reported another murder of a signatory of the 2016 peace agreement between the government and the defunct FARC-EP.

Noel Humberto Castro Colorado was a former rebel of the extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) who belonged to the Agua Bonita Territorial Training and Reincorporation Centers (ETCR).

According to the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz), the murder occurred in the municipality of Florencia, Caquetá department capital, "at around 09:45 [Colombia time, 13:45, GMT] by armed men on a motorcycle, while the signatory was guarding his vehicle."

Comunes Party reported that Castro Colorado, aged 45, was shot dead on the night of Tuesday, July 12, by armed men on a motorcycle as he was storing his car in the garage of his home.

The party founded by ex-rebels following the 2016 peace agreements said Castro Colorado was developing his productive project individually in Florencia, Caquetá department, in southwest Colombia. He had been transferred there for security reasons after receiving threats against his life.


INDEPAZ reported on the murder of Noel Humberto Castro Colorado, a former rebel of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) who belonged to the Territorial Spaces for Training and Reincorporation (ETCR) of Agua Bonita.

The Comunes Party President Rodrigo Londoño rejected the murder and asked President Iván Duque that his administration guarantee the protection of those who signed the agreements.

"With pain and indignation, I report a new murder of a peace signatory," Londoño said on Twitter, conveying condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Noel Humberto Castro Colorado.

With Castro Colorado's murder, there are now 324 peace signatories murdered following the 2016 peace agreements. That makes 255 during Iván Duque's administration, four in the last week and 25 so far in 2022.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Col ... -0019.html

Colombia: Extermination of Indigenous Peoples Denounced


Representatives of the Awá people denounced the government of Iván Duque for its inaction and described it as complicit in the extermination. Jul. 15, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@NoticiasCaracol

Published 15 July 2022 (14 hours 19 minutes ago)

Around 350 victimizing acts against the Awá people have been counted, of which 95 correspond to assassinations of important indigenous rights activists.

The Awá indigenous community in Colombia denounced this Thursday that extermination acts are being committed against its population due to the increase of assassinations by armed groups.

Representatives of the native people denounced the increased aggression against leaders, authorities, and community members by armed gangs linked to drug trafficking in a press conference.

They have also accused the governmental authorities of inaction in the face of these violent events. The representatives of the indigenous peoples considered that the Colombian State had left them alone and described it as an accomplice of systematic extermination.

They said that the indigenous communities had not noticed the results of the Peace Agreement signed in 2016, assuring that they have already gone to the different institutional levels to demand their right to life.


The SOS of the Awá indigenous community after the murder of one of its leaders: "Don't leave us alone."

In this regard, around 350 victimizing events have been counted against the Awá people, of which 95 correspond to murders of important indigenous rights activists.

In turn, the Indigenous Unit of the Awá people (Unipa) said that "the violations of fundamental rights deepened during and after the pandemic; facts that remain in total impunity due to the lack of progress in investigations by the competent entities."

The last recorded massacre occurred on July 3, when the alternate governor of the Inda Sabaleta Resguardo, Juan Orlando Moriano, was killed along with two young members of the Awá indigenous guard.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Col ... -0016.html

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Meet the ministerial cabinet of Colombia’s first left-wing government

Colombia’s president-elect, Gustavo Petro, has so far appointed eight ministers to serve in his cabinet, five of them are women

July 14, 2022 by Tanya Wadhwa


Photo: Colombia Humana

Colombia’s first left-wing government in 203 years since its independence is gearing up to be sworn in on August 7. The government to be headed by Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez of the progressive Historic Pact coalition, has been working steadily to build its cabinet of ministers. To date, eight cabinet members have been appointed, five of them are women.

During his election campaign, Petro announced that he would create the Ministry of Equality and Women. On Twitter, Petro said that the new ministry would have four goals: “achieve salary equality between men and women, recognize that the time of work in home valid for pension, vital income or half minimum wage to mothers who are the heads of the family, and establish women as owners of property and as subjects of development credit for entrepreneurship in the agrarian reform and in the popular economy.” After the historic victory on June 19, vice president-elect Francia Márquez declared that she would herself oversee this new ministry.

Appointments have also been confirmed for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Health, Minister of Environment, Minister of Agriculture, and Minister of Education.

More appointments are expected in the coming days. For now, let’s look at the profiles of those who will be part of this historic government:

Francia Márquez: Minister of Equality and Women

40-year-old Márquez is an Afro-descendant environmentalist and lawyer and the vice-president-elect of Colombia. She hails from the Cauca department in southwestern Colombia. She is nationally and internationally recognized for her work in defense of nature. In 2018, she was awarded the Goldman Prize -considered the ‘Nobel Prize’ for the environment- for her fight against illegal mining in Cauca.

She is a social leader, who represents the marginalized Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities and their struggles. Her work in defense of the territory and of the communities of the Cauca department has made her the enemy of the illegal armed groups operating in the country. In 2018, she suffered an attack in Santander de Quilichao municipality, during a meeting with the Association of Community Councils of North Cauca. During the election campaign, she received several death threats.

As vice-president, Márquez has vowed to increase economic investment in rural areas hit by armed conflicts, and ensure the implementation of the 2016 peace agreements.

Álvaro Leyva Durán: Minister of Foreign Affairs

On June 25, Petro announced that economist and lawyer Álvaro Leyva Durán would be the Minister of Foreign Affairs, highlighting that the ministry “will be a foreign ministry of Peace” and that “Colombia will contribute all its efforts to the world to overcome the climate crisis, and we hope that the world will contribute efforts to overcome our endemic violence.”

Leyva, 79, has extensive experience in national politics, having served as a minister, congressman, and councilor. He was Minister of Mines and Energy from 1984 and 1985 during the government of Belisario Betancourt. In 1978, he was elected to the House of Representatives and in 1982, to the Senate. He was also a councilman of Bogotá between 1974 and 1976 and a deputy for Cundinamarca between 1976 and 1978. In 1991, he was elected as a member of the National Constituent Assembly, which was in charge of drafting the new Magna Carta of Colombia.

Since the promulgation of the new Constitution in 1991, he has played a fundamental role in several peace processes that the Colombian State has tried to carry out with the different guerrilla groups. One of these mediations resulted in the signing of peace agreements between the former government of Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), in Havana, Cuba, in November 2016.

Despite being a member of the Conservative Party, he has maintained close contacts with leftist movements in the country, including the demobilized FARC.

Leyva’s historic dedication to peace and respect for human rights is key, especially when the new government seeks to re-establish diplomatic relations with the neighboring country, Venezuela.

José Antonio Ocampo: Minister of Finance

Economist José Antonio Ocampo was appointed Minister of Finance on June 30, with the stated goal of “building a productive economy and an economy for life”.

69-year-old Ocampo, who is a professor at Columbia University, New York, US, is one of Colombia’s best-known economists. He was Minister of Finance and Public Credit from 1996 to 1997, and Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development from 1993 to 1994. He was also a board member of the Central Bank, and the director of the National Planning Department. He was also the Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) from 1998 to 2003, and then deputy secretary general of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs until 2007.

He is a progressive economist and has previously defended tax on exports of basic products. He supports Petro’s plans to introduce a progressive tax reform to support social programs and fight inequalities.

Patricia Ariza: Minister of Culture

On July 4, Petro appointed renowned artist and activist Patricia Ariza as Minister of Culture, stressing that there would be “an explosion of culture throughout Colombia for Peace and coexistence. A culture for identity to dynamize the diverse Colombian nature.”

The 76-year-old writer, poet, actress, and theater director is widely known within Colombia and globally due to her impressive contributions to Colombia’s cultural production and social movements for peace and justice. She is co-founder of the Bogotá theater La Candelaria, and the current director of the Colombian Theater Corporation. She is also the creator of the Women on Stage for Peace festival.

Ariza was a member of the left-wing Patriotic Union (UP) party, and is a survivor of the genocide of the Patriotic Union by paramilitary groups and state forces in mid-1980s. She has dedicated her whole life to keeping the ideals of the political movement alive through art. Through her work, she has consistently highlighted and reflected on the harsh reality of civil war, the victims of armed conflicts and violence, and has tried to empower the disadvantaged sectors such as women and senior citizens, and promote social interaction, reduce conflict, and consolidate peace.

She has vowed to support Petro and Márquez’s efforts to combat paramilitary violence and strengthen peace in the country.

Carolina Corcho: Minister of Health

39-year-old Corcho is a doctor, psychiatrist, and political scientist. Previously, she was vice president of the Colombian Medical Federation. Through her work, she has been an important voice against government neglect and has condemned the right-wing government of the outgoing President Ivan Duque for the worsening working conditions of health professionals and workers. She was a consultant for the Pan American Health Organization and an evaluator for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. She was also president of the NGO Corporación Latinoamericana Sur and chaired the National Association of Interns and Residents (ANIR).

Corcho and Petro have worked together in the past. Corcho was director of Social Participation and Citizen Services of the Bogotá Secretariat of Health, and Undersecretary of Territorial Management in Health of Bogotá when Petro was Bogotá’s mayor (2012-2015).

She is in favor of a major reform of the public healthcare system promoted by Petro, which ends the EPS, the compulsory health insurance plan, strengthens the network of public hospitals, preventive healthcare services, formalizes workers, among other measures.

Susana Muhamad: Minister of Environment

Muhamad is an environmentalist and political scientist. She is a member of the Colombia Humana party, founded by Petro in 2011. She also worked with Petro before as the Secretary of the Environment of Bogotá and General Secretary of the Mayor’s Office. During her time in office, she made great strides in the transition to much more environmentally-friendly transportation.

Muhamad has also worked extensively with Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities in rural areas. She participated in social projects such as Paz a la Calle and the Alianza Colombia Libre de Fracking.

Her principles of sustainable development coincide with Petro’s proposals to gradually reduce the country’s economic dependence on extractive industries and fossil fuels.

Cecilia López: Minister of Agriculture
López, 79, is an economist, has vast political experience and has been appointed to several cabinet positions. She was Minister of Environment from 1994 to 1996 and Minister of Agriculture from 1996 to 1997. She was also the director of the Social Security Department between 1990 and 1992, and the director of the National Planning Department between 1997 and 1998. She was the Ambassador of Colombia in The Netherlands (1985–1988), and Senator of the republic of Colombia with the Liberal Party (2006–2010).

The experienced government functionary has already expressed her support for Petro’s agrarian reform in favor of the historically dispossessed and neglected Afro-descendant, Indigenous, and peasant minorities.

Alejandro Gaviria: Minister of Education

On July 8, Petro appointed economist and engineer Alejandro Gaviria as Minister of Education, emphasizing that his mission would be to consolidate free public higher education, strengthen research centers in public universities, and increase the rate of preschool enrollment.

57-year-old Gaviria is an economist, engineer and professor. He was Minister of Health and Social Protection of Colombia from 2012 to 2018. During his time in office, he promoted the regulation of drug prices, contributed to the advancement of universal health coverage, and fostered the equalization of benefits between the contributory and subsidized health regimes. He also implemented regulations related to euthanasia, the use of cannabis derivatives for medicinal and scientific purposes, the prices of contraceptives, and the prohibition of the use of glyphosate in aerial spraying of crops for illicit use. He also served as Deputy Director of the National Planning Department of Colombia.

Prior to his political career, Gaviria was a professor for eight years and dean of the School of Economics at University of the Andes until 2012. In 2010, he was named by the Portafolio newspaper as the best economics professor in the country. Recently, he served as Rector of the University of the Andes.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/07/14/ ... overnment/

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Colombian Ombudsman Condemns Forced Detentions


Armed violence has increased, especially against former guerrillas trying to rejoin society after years of armed conflict. | Photo: Week
Published 15 July 2022

The Colombian Ombudsman asked the armed actors to respect the rights of the communities and compliance with International Humanitarian Law.

The Colombian Ombudsman's Office condemned this Wednesday the arrest of at least 15 people, including minors, in the Alto Purare sector, Tame, in the department of Arauca.

The entity expressed its concern "its concern about the situation of systematic violence that the department of Arauca is going through, where illegal armed actors" promote confrontations that affect the population.

“In the last few hours, in the Alto Purare sector in Tame, at least 15 people close to reincorporation processes were detained, including minors. We demand respect for his life and integrity," the Ombudsman, Carlos Camargo, reported on the incident.


The municipal official, Juan Villate, confirmed the kidnapping of ex-guerrilla combatants in the process of reincorporation and added that "those responsible for the detention and disappearance of these people" are 20 armed men belonging to the National Liberation Army (ELN).

Carlos Camargo asked "the armed actors to respect the rights of the communities and compliance with International Humanitarian Law" above all because of the social risk that it implies for these communities vulnerable to forced displacement.

In addition, he recalled that since January 2 the country has experienced a "recruitment of clashes between illegal armed groups" and although they minimized the attacks during the electoral process, the offensive groups once again carried out "actions that put the population at risk. ".

Since then, the Ombudsman's Office has been working on "security councils, territorial justice transition committees and subcommittees for prevention, protection and guarantees of non-repetition" to develop strategies that guarantee communal rights, as the statement points out.


Camargo asked the authorities to respond to the early warnings that the Ombudsman has issued for the territories of Arauca (and its urban and peri-urban areas), Arauquita, Saravena, Fortul and Tame, Puerto Rondón and Cravo Norte.

As a consequence of the violence in Aruaca, many citizens have confined themselves, especially those from the villages of El Temblador, Gran Bucare, Canoas, La Holanda and the La Esperanza indigenous reservation, where armed altercations were reported.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/defensor ... -0007.html

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Special court in Colombia convicts 22 former military officers for killing over 300 innocent civilians

The JEP determined that the members of the 16th Brigade killed 303 innocent people between 2005 and 2008 in the Casanare department, and then framed them to authorities as guerrilla fighters killed in combat to obtain rewards

July 27, 2022 by Tanya Wadhwa


On July 25, Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) charged 22 former members of the army, one state official, and two civilians with war crimes and crimes against humanity for murdering over 300 innocent people. Photo: JEP/Twitter

On Monday, July 25, Colombia’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) charged 22 former members of the army, one state official, and two civilians with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The JEP determined that the members of the 16th Brigade killed 303 innocent people in 218 incidents between 2005 and 2008 in the Casanare department, and then framed them to government authorities as left-wing guerrilla fighters killed in combat to obtain rewards.

The JEP condemned that within the military unit, a criminal structure was created that naturalized this violent practice to access promotions, cash prizes, vacations, and other perks. It also stated that under the command of convicted retired Major General Henry Torres, these criminal operations increased.

“A complex criminal organization was implanted in the XVI Brigade that used the institutional architecture of the Army to present murders and forced disappearances as combat casualties…The Chamber of Recognition of Truth of the JEP established that under the command of Major General Henry William Torres Escalante, the artificial presentation of operational results in this eastern region of the country increased,” the JEP said in a statement.

The special tribunal stated that the defendants used deception to attract the victims, and that after killing them, they equipped their dead bodies with weapons, ammunition and clothing to pass them off as combatants, and recreated fictitious combat scenarios to make their version of events credible.

The JEP added that “all those responsible followed the line of conduct promoted by their commander. These were not isolated acts or acts committed spontaneously,” and that “it was a criminal plan that had its objectives, resources, roles, and modes of operation. It was aimed at consolidating territories and showing progress in the war against the guerrillas.”

It reported that the soldiers used more than 140 million pesos (approximately USD 31,000), from public resources to finance these criminal actions. It also reported that these crimes represented almost two thirds of the results reported by the military unit during the said period.


According to the JEP, the majority of the victims were men between the ages of 18 and 25, many of whom were relocated from Boyacá, Meta and Arauca departments. However, the JEP’s investigation revealed that the military also murdered nine women, one of whom was pregnant, and a young man with diverse sexual orientation.

The JEP was able to establish that the military used children and adolescents to participate in the hostilities, and that the gender-diverse person was persecuted for his sexuality. For these reasons, for the first time the JEP charged the defendants with war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Besides major general Torres, two colonels, three lieutenant colonels, ten officers, six non-commissioned officers, an agent from the defunct Administrative Department of Security (DAS), and two civilian recruiters who tricked young men and women and handed them over to the army to be assassinated, were pronounced guilty.

Those convicted have 30 working days to acknowledge the facts and their responsibility. They can also reject them or provide arguments or evidence in their defense. After that period of time, the JEP will decide when to schedule a public hearing and announce a sentence. According to the Colombian penal code, they could be sentenced to 20 years in prison.

These extrajudicial executions are known as “false positives” in Colombia. During the rule of former far-right President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), military officials were rewarded for these killings during counterinsurgency operations. In February 2021, the JEP reported that the Colombian military carried out more than 6,400 of these extrajudicial killings. Human rights groups and the families of victims have said the real number could be much higher.

In April, ten retired members of the military confessed to kidnapping and murdering over one hundred civilians, the framing them as guerrilla fighters. The JEP is expected to issue a resolution in their case in the coming days. The special tribunal has the authority to offer alternatives to prison sentences to people who confess their crimes and make reparations.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/07/27/ ... civilians/

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Colombia: Summit of Indigenous Peoples Aims to Strengthen Unity


Indigenous peoples of Colombia hold summit to strengthen unity. | Photo: Twitter @EnPichinchaU

Published 28 July 2022 (10 hours 4 minutes ago)

The meeting is taking place in the municipality of Silvia Cauca, a territory of ancestral mixed cultures, with the aim of strengthening their processes of struggle and resistance.

Several organizations from Indigenous groups across Colombia are holding the Summit of Indigenous Peoples to strengthen unity and secure autonomy for their communities and territories.

The meeting is taking place in the municipality of Silvia Cauca, a territory of ancestral mixed cultures, with the aim of strengthening their processes of struggle and resistance.

The aim of the gathering, as expressed by participants themselves is "to strengthen the path of unity and autonomy of the native peoples, collectively devising the Colombian indigenous movement’s own agenda”. The summit is expected to last until Friday.

The Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca and six other organizations are taking part in the summit, following an agenda that contains topics to build political guidelines to define a common and united organizational scenario for the indigenous peoples.


Likewise, the meeting serves to identify the way to face the current political situation and to specify a programmatic agenda for the indigenous peoples of Colombia.

Last week, Gustavo Petro appointed Arhuaca social leader Leonor Zalabata as Colombia’s ambassador to the United Nations.

He also announced that Patricia Tobon, an Embera lawyer and Truth Commissioner, will head the Victims Unit and Giovani Yule, a Nasa sociologist, will direct the Land Restitution Unit.

In this way, the next government of the Historical Pact begins to comply with the participation of the different social sectors that comprise it in the direction of Colombian politics.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Col ... -0002.html

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Colombia Witnesses One of the Worst Killing-Sprees of 2022
ORINOCO TRIBUNE2 AUGUST 8, 2022


People holding candles in a public ceremony. Photo: Radio Nacional CO/Twitter

By Tanya Wadhwa – Aug 4, 2022

According to the Institute of Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), 20 citizens were murdered in six massacres in the past 10 days. Five social leaders and five ex-combatants were also assassinated in the same period

Paramilitary violence continues to spill blood and wreak havoc in Colombia. Reports from human rights organizations indicate that massacres, systematic assassination of social leaders, and genocide of former combatants of the demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group continue at a horrifying rate. In recent days, the country witnessed one of the worst killing-sprees of the year and of the rule of the outgoing government of far-right President Ivan Duque.

According to the Institute of Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), 20 citizens were murdered in six massacres between July 24 and August 2. Five social leaders and five ex-combatants were also assassinated in the same period. The alarming number of deaths is one of the highest death tolls registered during a week this year.

The most recent massacre was perpetrated on August 1 in the rural area of Mercaderes municipality in the Cauca department where three young men were reportedly killed after being held for sometime by an illegal armed group.

According to INDEPAZ, this was the 59th massacre of the year. In these massacres, at least 208 Colombians have been slaughtered.

On August 2, INDEPAZ reported the assassination of peasant leader José Luis Quiñones in the Tamalameque municipality of Cesar department. According to reports, he was killed in his home by unknown armed men who forcibly entered it in the afternoon of August 2.

Quiñones was a member of the Dialogue Commission for South Bolívar, Central and South Cesar, South Magdalena and Processes from Santander (CISBCSC), an organization affiliated with the National Agrarian Coordinator (CNA) and the People’s Congress (CdP). He was engaged in the process of recovering land on the Matarredonda rural estate just before his death.

The CNA condemned Quiñones’ murder and held the conservative government responsible. “This vile act was perpetrated by undercover agents of the State acting on behalf of paramilitaries and in favor of the landowners in the area,” said the CNA in a statement.

The CNA also denounced the “various acts of persecution, stigmatization and assassinations of social leaders have been carried out in a systematic way” in the Cesar department. It recalled that renowned peasant and political leaders Teófilo Acuña and Jorge Alberto Tafur, who were members of the same process, were also assassinated earlier this year.

The CNA called on national and international human rights organizations “to speak out against these abuses and demand that the Colombian State and the incumbent government guarantee the protection of communities and our leaders.” It decried that the authorities “have denounced those responsible for these brutal acts without carrying out corresponding investigation and prosecution processes against them.”

According to INDEPAZ, Quiñones was the 110th social leader to be assassinated in 2022, and the 1,337th since the signing of Havana peace agreements in November 2016.


On August 2, INDEPAZ also reported the murder of ex-FARC guerrilla fighter Rigoberto López Vallejo in the San Miguel municipality of Putumayo department. He was killed by armed individuals on the night of July 31. López was part of the reincorporation process and was registered in the government’s Yarí Territorial Space for Training and Reincorporation (ETCR) program.

The Comunes Party, which emerged after the disarmament of the FARC as a part of the peace agreements, condemned his murder, stating that it was “clearly part of a systematic plan to exterminate peace signers. It is no coincidence that in one month, 10 of them have been murdered.”

Hours before condemning López’s murder, the Comunes Party had denounced the assassination of another peace signatory, Idelber Gómez Solano, who was also in the reincorporation process. He was killed in the Puerto Caicedo municipality in Putumayo. “Duque’s last week in office begins with the assassination of Idelber Gómez Solano, the 259th victim of the government’s sabotage of the implementation of the Peace Agreements. What a pain to continue saying goodbye to human beings, with families and dreams, who wanted Colombia to live in peace,” tweeted the party.

In the early hours of August 1, the Comunes Party reported and criticized the assassination of ex-combatant Wiston Antonio Mosquera in the Bello municipality of Antioquia department. “Stop the killings! Three murders in one day…Duque is guilty by action and omission!,” said the party.

Later, in a statement, the Comunes Party called on “the international community, the UN, the IACHR and the human rights organizations in Colombia and in the world to denounce the extermination to which peace and its defenders are being subjected, and to show solidarity in the demand for urgent measures to stop this state of permanent massacre.” It also called on the incoming left-wing government and President-elect Gustavo Petro “to prioritize the integral protection of the life of peace signatories and social leaders.”

According to INDEPAZ, with López’s assassination, the number of ex-combatants killed in 2022 reached 31, and 337 since the signing of peace agreements. The Comunes Party reported that 342 ex-combatants had been killed since the signing of peace agreements.

INDEPAZ published a report on August 2 detailing figures that show the worsening of the situation in Colombia with the rise of violence during the past four years of the Duque government.

INDEPAZ reported that between August 7, 2018 and August 1, 2022, 957 Afro-descendant and Indigenous community leaders, environmentalists, human rights activists, land defenders, and peasant and social leaders were assassinated in different departments by paramilitary and drug trafficking groups operating in the country. Additionally, during this period, 261 peace signatories were murdered. In addition to these assassinations, 1,192 people were killed in 313 massacres.

The institute reported that during the said period, 2,366 people were threatened and 555 were kidnapped. It also reported that during the Duque administration, 220 cases of forced disappearance, 446 incidents of confinement of civilians, 545 events of massive forced displacement, and 29,634 extortion cases were recorded. The Ombudsman’s Office issued 178 violence related early warnings in various parts.

INDEPAZ also presented in numbers how state violence intensified in the country during Duque’s rule. The organization reported that the national police committed 421 homicides during the Duque tenure. It also detailed that during the national strike against Duque’s austerity policies, between April 28 and June 30, 2021, 83 people were killed – 44 at the hands of security forces, 96 suffered eye injuries, 35 were sexual assaulted, 66 were judicially framed, 898 reported violent interventions, and 1,747 suffered physical violence.


(Peoples Dispatch)

https://orinocotribune.com/colombia-wit ... s-of-2022/

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HARD DATA OF THE LAST URIBISTA ERA
THE TRAIL OF VIOLENCE LEFT BY IVÁN DUQUE IN COLOMBIA
6 Aug 2022 , 11:36 am .


Various reports reveal how the four years of Uribeism deepened repression and violence in both urban and rural territories (Photo: File)

In addition to the UN and other organizations, the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Indepaz) recently issued a report called " Figures during the government of Iván Duque – Balance of violence in figures " in which most of the the data that shows the management of the scourge of violence in Colombia during the government of Iván Duque.

The organization, formed in 1984, specifies the territorial implications of the policies of the outgoing Uribista government, as well as the actions of the illegal armed groups and the security forces regarding the right to life.

The war has never completely gone away from the neighboring country, both the murders of social leaders and ex-combatants and the reappearance of massacres show that peace in Colombia has not yet found its way.

PERSISTENCE OF VIOLENCE

Even when the corporate press insists on associating the violence only with the actions of the so-called "dissidents" of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army (FARC-EP) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), the figures reveal that, in most cases, those responsible for the murders, massacres, threats and forced displacement are narco-paramilitary groups or successors of paramilitarism. In second place are the dissident and residual groups of the peace process with the FARC-EP, in third place the ELN and in fourth place the security forces.

Indepaz places the intellectual authorship and complicit alliance of the legal and illegal economic and political elites behind the material responsibility for these events, as well as the political responsibility of the government of Iván Duque due to the non-implementation of the Peace Agreement, in particular by imploding the effectiveness of the National Commission for Security Guarantees (CNGS).

In five years, said entity failed to provide the State with public policy for the "dismantling of behaviors and organizations that threaten peace," the report notes. The "insufficiency" of Duque's policies has been pointed out in the Congress of the Republic and in statements by international organizations such as the UN .

The report affirms that the failure to comply with the 2016 agreements on issues such as the Comprehensive Rural Reform and drug policy and substitution of crops for illicit use "has facilitated the recomposition of armed groups, of mafias with connections in money laundering companies and with agents of the State".

Some data:

*The number of homicides during the Duque government was 50,179; in each full year of management it did not fall below 12 thousand. In 2021, the year of greatest social conflict due to the National Strike, the figure was 13,873.
*Likewise, the annual homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants increased between 2018 and 2021, only falling from 25 in 2020, the year of general confinement due to the global pandemic.
*In the municipalities with Development Plans with a Territorial Approach (PDET) and in municipalities with the establishment of the Comprehensive National Crop Substitution Program (PNIS), the homicide rates were notoriously above the national rate.
*Between August 2018 and August 2022, 957 leaders and human rights defenders were assassinated, as well as 261 signers of the Peace Agreement.
*In that same period there were 313 massacres with 1 thousand 192 victims.
*In that same period there were 220 cases of forced disappearance and 545 events of forced displacement.
*Between January 2019 and July 2022 there were 555 kidnappings.
*During the National Strike, called to confront the neoliberal policies of Duque, there were 83 homicides, of which 44 were presumably carried out by the Public Force, in addition to 1,747 cases of physical violence, 898 violent interventions, 96 victims of ocular violence, 66 stagings judicial and 35 victims of sexual violence.


General homicide rate in Colombia, homicide rate in municipalities with Development Plans with a Territorial Approach (PDET) and in municipalities with the establishment of the Comprehensive National Crop Substitution Program (PNIS) (Photo: Indepaz)

Indepaz associates the situation of persistence of armed violence with the deterioration of social indicators of the population's well-being and shows the precariousness of the policies implemented by Duque, who chose the path of militarization of areas without a comprehensive approach to socioeconomic problems.

In addition, they affirm that the lack of effectiveness in the protection of communities and of social leadership is directly related to the security strategy, which considers that the population of small producers and merchants in areas of illegal economies dominated by drug trafficking or by mafias is part of the criminal chain. Their claims are frequently seen as forms of protection from national and international cartels.

The Colombian State, through the Armed Forces, views as suspicious the regional social organizations that have opposed militarization and the forced eradication of coca crops with glyphosate, an agrochemical that affects the health of communities, also causes the deforestation and loss of biodiversity in the vulnerable ecosystems of the Amazon and the Andes.

SHOTS TO THE HEART OF SOCIAL LEADERSHIP AND PEACE IN THE TERRITORIES

Armed groups and the State have involved social organizations and ethnic groups in their disputes for territorial stabilization and consolidation, which has resulted in the assassination of social leaders, environmentalists and human rights defenders.

On the other hand, but along the same lines, Uribismo has described the peace agreement as "illegitimate" and persists in attacking transitional justice and political benefits for former FARC combatants who are complying with the agreements and with the programs of reinstatement. This has served to stigmatize and isolate them socially and politically, which serves as the table for their physical elimination. Some data about it:

*Between August 2018 and August 2022, 957 murders of social leaders occurred, of which 308 (32%) were executed in 2020.
*The three departments with the highest number of executions of social leaders were Cauca (246), Antioquia (113) and Nariño (99), accounting for 48% of the cases.
*The number of municipalities affected by this type of criminal action has decreased from 138, its maximum in 2018, to 111 in 2021. So far in 2022, 76 municipalities have been affected.
*One of the causes of the high number of municipalities affected in 2018 was the search for expansion of the armed groups and the appearance of new structures.
*If the trend of the first six months of 2022 is maintained, the year would end with 130 affected municipalities.
*The most affected social sectors have been the peasants with 435 assassinated leaders, the indigenous with 305 and the civic-urban with 133.
*Between August 2018 and August 2022, 261 peace agreement signatories were assassinated, two of them occurred in Ecuador, and 78 (30%) were executed in 2019.
*The three departments with the highest number of executions of signatories were Cauca (47), Nariño (27) and Putumayo (27). They concentrate 39% of the cases.
*The most affected municipalities were Tumaco (Nariño) with 13 murders, while San José del Guaviare (Guaviare), Cali (Valle del Cauca) and Puerto Asís (Putumayo).


Leaders killed between August 7, 2018 and August 1, 2022; in 2020 the highest number was registered despite the social confinement due to a global pandemic (Photo: Indepaz)

An RT report states that to speak of social leaders is to speak of environmental defenders or indigenous authorities, of peasants and small producers; community fighters; women who develop social work; members of Afro-descendant communities and members of organized groups that focus on social action as a way to make up for the absence of the state.

POVERTY AND STATE ABANDONMENT AS A CATALYST FOR WAR

The abandonment of governments, which has been outlined in other reports such as the so-called " Territorial Violence in Colombia: Recommendations for the New Government " of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia, is reflected in the figures that Indepaz shows in its report.

Multidimensional poverty has been a catalyst for death, violence mainly affects people in peripheral territories where there is also a limited state presence and where the rate of multidimensional poverty is usually higher. The majority of the indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant populations live in these territories. This is evidenced by data such as the following:

*During the Duque government, 1,531 events related to the assassination of leaders, signatories of the agreement, and massacres have been recorded.
*The five departments most affected by assassinations of leaders, signatories and massacres are Cauca (340), Antioquia (194), Nariño (151), Valle del Cauca (117) and Putumayo (103).
*Tumaco is the municipality in the country most affected by assassinations of leaders, signatories and massacres with 73 acts of this type, its Multidimensional Poverty Measure is 63.3%.
*There have been 358 municipalities affected by assassinations of leaders and signatories, massacres and victims of antipersonnel mines. Tumaco and Santander de Quilichao are the most affected municipalities with 72 and 40 acts/events, respectively.
*There are 13 municipalities with between 21 and 73 events, the capital cities Cali and Cúcuta being among the most affected.
*Between August 2018 and August 2022, 313 massacres were registered with 1,192 victims.
*The three departments with the highest number of massacres were Antioquia (58 with 216 victims), Cauca (47 with 167 victims) and Nariño (28 with 116 victims). They concentrate both 42% of the cases and of the victims.
*During the year 2021, 95 massacres were registered, the highest figure in Duque's four-year term, which ended with 335 lives, while in 2020 there were 91 events of this type but with the highest number of murdered: 95.
*The municipalities with the highest number of massacres are Cúcuta (9), Tumaco (9), Bogotá (8) and Santander de Quilichao (8).
*So far in 2022 there have been 59 massacres with 209 victims, if the trend continues this year would end with 418 events of this type.


Social mobilization against violence was a constant during the Duque administration in Colombia, especially when the government uses subterfuge to evade the concrete facts (Photo: File)

It should be noted that the Observatory of Human Rights and Conflicts of Indepaz understands a massacre as the intentional and simultaneous homicide of several people (three or more people) in a defenseless state, in the same circumstances of time, manner and place. Although Duque wanted to change the concept by calling them "collective homicides" arguing that they were called that in "the manuals of the public force that were established more than seven years ago."

THE HOTSPOTS OF THE CONFLICT AND VENEZUELA

At least 53 armed structures are present in the 32 departments of the country between "residual groups", narco-paramilitary structures and ELN; During the Duque administration, their activity has grown as the number of municipalities in which they are present.

However, Indepaz has located the confrontations in foci "determined by particular interests that, on a national scale, are not interconnected under the logic of the struggle for political power." These are 10 territorial axes, of which two border with Venezuela:

*Catatumbo and south of Cesar.
*Arauca, border with Venezuela to the division between Arauca and Apure, which is the Arauca River.

In both axes, as in the others, the dispute, in addition to politics, includes drug trafficking routes and a mercenary presence to destabilize governance in Venezuela as part of the regime change operation, via siege, that the United States implements against Chavismo through government charge.

Meanwhile, President-elect Gustavo Petro has promised and launched some actions to bring the different armed actors to dialogue and justice. Those first steps depend on the extinction of that wake of sorrow and uneasiness for a people that seeks dialogue and non-violence, that is, total peace.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... n-colombia

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Colombia: Petro Initiates Promised Reforms


Gustavo Petro promises to forge a peace agreement with armed groups and end the "failed drug war." Aug. 9, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@El_Cooperante

Published 9 August 2022 (15 hours 24 minutes ago)

The right seems to be the main obstacle to implementing the 2016 Peace Accord in Colombia; it refutes President Gustavo Petro's peace plans.

"The government seeks to negotiate with Mafiosi and corrupt people, period. We will oppose it with determination," said Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal of the right-wing Democratic Center party, led by former President Alvaro Uribe, on Monday, alluding to President Petro's decision to negotiate with the remnants of the FARC and ELN guerrillas and narcos to restore peace in the country.

Petro, the first leftist President in Colombia's history, promised, in his inauguration speech on Sunday, to lead the country towards "true and definitive peace" following the negotiation that led to the disarmament of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas in 2017.

The president, who has a majority in Congress, wants to extinguish the armed conflict that has plagued the country for more than half a century. To this end, he said he would resume peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the last recognized guerrilla group in the South American country, while calling on armed drug gangs to lay down their arms in exchange for judicial benefits.

With the arrival of Gustavo Petro to the presidency, Colombia now has another opportunity to regain the peace that has been stalled for the last four years.


After taking the oath as president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro promised to comply with the Peace Agreement.
The ELN and the largest group of FARC dissidents to have walked away from the Peace Accords and the Clan del Golfo - the main armed wing of the narco - have said they are willing to sit at the dialogue table with Petro. The latter two organizations have even separately proposed a ceasefire.

Violence in Colombia skyrocketed during the four years of the administration of former President Ivan Duque due to the rejection of the implementation of the Peace Accord.

Reports indicate that there was evidence of a strengthening of illegal armed groups, in addition to a 7 percent increase in the homicide rate and a 105 percent increase in the number of massacres - a total of 930 social leaders were killed - in the last four years.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Col ... -0018.html

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Colombian Government Announces Official Resumption of Peace Talks with ELN
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 9, 2022
Michele de Mello


The administration of Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez has vowed to prioritize peace and ameliorate the devastating setbacks the processes had under Ivan Duque.

Cuba, Ecuador, Chile and Norway have been chosen to mediate the negotiations between Petro’s administration and the guerrilla group

In the first press conference to local media after being sworn in as president, Gustavo Petro confirmed the official resumption of negotiations with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the largest guerrilla group active in the country. “We want to revitalize the protocols and in the coming weeks it will be announced whether we will maintain the dialogues in Cuba. It doesn’t depend only on us, but on who wants to negotiate,” the head of state said on Monday August 8.

The peace dialogues between the Colombian Executive and the ELN had begun in Havana, with the participation of other countries as guarantors of peace, including Chile, Venezuela, Norway and Brazil itself. The negotiations were interrupted in 2018 by former president Iván Duque, whose four years in office were some of the most violent in the country’s history.

Now, in addition to Cuba, the Chilean government has also offered to host the dialogues. “We express our willingness to continue collaborating under the terms that the Colombian government considers most useful for its cause,” declared the newly elected Gabriel Boric during his visit to Bogotá for the presidential inauguration. The other options would be Ecuador, Mexico, and Norway.

The first talks between representatives of the ELN and the then government of Juan Manuel Santos in 2017 took place in Quito and then in Havana.

During the elections, the largest active guerrilla group in Colombia, with a presence in 200 municipalities, announced a unilateral ceasefire as a demonstration of its interest in dialogue. Following the victory of the Historic Pact in early July, ELN commander Eliécer Herlinto Chamorro, known as “Antonio García,” issued a statement reiterating his willingness to resume negotiations with the new government “so that their results will bring peace with social justice for all of Colombia.”

The ELN, created in 1964 under the inspiration of the Cuban Revolution and Liberation Theology, is the last insurgent group with national action in Colombia after the 2016 Peace Accords. It has a presence in two hundred municipalities, with about 2,300 members, with the highest concentration in the departments of Arauca, Cauca, Chocó, Nariño, Catatumbo and Antioquia, according to the Peace and Reconciliation Foundation (Pares).

In an interview in August this year, four years after the rupture of the dialogues, Commander Antonio García said that the ELN has never imposed conditions, “it is understood that all issues can be discussed or examined at a table, if peace is truly desired.”

Upon assuming the presidency last Sunday August 7, Gustavo Petro again reiterated that his commitment is to “total peace” in Colombia.

This article was first published in Portuguese at Brasil de Fato.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... -with-eln/

[blindpig]

The Nobodies Take Office in Colombia: An In-Depth Analysis
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 12, 2022
Alina Duarte



Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and the nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on them–will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.

Who are not, although they are.
Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.
Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.
Who don’t create art, but handicrafts.
Who don’t have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police blotter of the local paper.

The nobodies, who are worth less than the bullet that kills them.

The Nobodies

By Eduardo Galeano[1]



June 19, electoral victory

People are crying, embracing, yelling, as the streets fill with joy. Horns honk and people dance in the middle of avenues. They can’t believe that the news traveling by word of mouth, tweet to tweet, news show to news show, is really true. As the minutes and hours pass, they confirm that it is true: This June 19th they—the Nobodies—have won.

“I am tingling from head to toes, overcome with emotion because I know that this is an historic accomplishment for all of us to remember. What joy! What happiness! Until dignity becomes customary!” says Ana Yuli Gamboa with a big smile—an Afro-Colombian woman from Cali who has come out to celebrate.

Like Ana Yuli, little by little thousands took to the streets and plazas of the country to celebrate the victory of the Pacto Histórico, a victory that tastes like their own.


Ana Yuli Gamboa. Photo: Alina Duarte

“After 214 years we finally have a government of the people—a people’s government, a government of people with calloused hands, a government of ordinary people, a government of The Nobodies of Colombia. Sisters and brothers, let us bring reconciliation to this nation. Let’s go for peace in a decisive way, with love and joy; let’s go for dignity. I am the first woman vice-president of Colombia; I am your vice-president,” said Francia Márquez before thousands in Bogotá after the victory of the Pacto Histórico was confirmed. Many more women and men saw her on screens, heard her on the radio, and followed her words on social media in the rest of the country and the rest of the hemisphere.

A few minutes later came the sentence that many had been waiting years to hear, “I am Gustavo Petro and I am your president.” That was when the Movistar Arena in Bogotá reverberated in response to the next occupant of the Palacio de Nariño.

I was in Cali, salsa capital of the world, when I witnessed these tears of joy and dancing. The band Niche’s anthem “Cali Pachanguero” was tapped out in the horns announcing the victory. And between tears, hundreds of Colombian men and women made these victorious words their own: it is the dawning of a new era for the country, the era of the Pacto.

The Pacto Histórico: a one-of-a kind alliance

The Pacto Histórico was officially born on February 11, 2021. Political figures on the left and center-left announced this alliance which would first seek to consolidate a position that could win a legislative majority in Congress, and second, produce a candidate who could win the presidency. The Pacto Histórico succeeded.

What was unique about this coalition was the members it brought together. It was not a mere alliance among political parties, but also included social movements from a broad range of the ideological spectrum.

Colombia Humana (Humane Colombia), Polo Democrático Alternativo (Alternative Democratic Pole), Movimiento Alternativo Indígena y Social (Alternative Indigenous and Social Movement), Unión Patriótica-Partido Comunista (Patriotic Union-Communist Party), Todos Somos Colombia (We Are All Colombia), and Congreso de los Pueblos y Comunes (Congress of Peoples and Communes—a party founded by former FARC combatants), are just some of the groups that answered the call.

However, young people, women, peasants, trade unionists, Colombian men and women from the historically excluded segments of society—the periphery, the poorest neighborhoods, the working class—soon organically showed up for this appointment with history. The Pacto was joined by The Nobodies, the people who didn’ hesitate to go out into the streets in April of 2021 when President Iván Duque threatened to implement a tax reform package that would benefit only the ruling class. This time thousands and thousands of them took to the streets.

Nationally, more than 70 people who raised their voices did so at the cost of their own lives, while hundreds refused to back down despite the brutal repression of the police forces.

One of the main trenches of struggle in Cali was Puerto Resistencia, a place where fearless youths came together, with hundreds of them forming a “front line.” For months on end, they stood firm for a new Colombia, even though some of their comrades were murdered before their very eyes during this dark period.

Such was the case of “Wao,” a young man from Cali who after months of marches, road blocks, repression and persecution, felt that it was all worth it. On the night of June 19th, despite the possibility that the police would arrest him for his activism, he did not hesitate one second in going out to celebrate the victory together with hundreds of other young people.


“Panda” and “Wao”, activists at Puerto Resistencia, Cali. Photo: Alina Duarte.

“This victory by Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez is our victory, because here in Puerto Resistencia we have bet absolutely everything on this. We have shown leadership, inner city youth programs, building this with the people … We are showing that yes, we can. Yes, we can make a change for the good of our children’s future. This fills my heart, I feel it here in my chest, I tell you sincerely.”

On the night of the victory, Gustavo Petro thanked those young people and also asked for the release of those who are still incarcerated—words which brought great joy to the resistance in Cali. “To be honest with you, that was an act of bravery, from the heart. They know and believe in us, that we represent change,” said Wao with a lump in his throat.

We cannot forget that the social uprising that lasted almost a year at different levels of intensity, occurred immediately prior to the taking of power by the Pacto Histórico.

The repressive response by the police exacerbated the social indignation for almost ten months. There were constant protests, which were met with constant repression. But what was even more important was the massive level of organization and consciousness raising among the Colombian people.


José Alberto Tejada and the young people of Puerto Resistencia in Cali. Photo: Alina Duarte

José Alberto Tejada, a journalist who covered the social uprising in Cali and now serves as a member of Congress for the Pacto Histórico, points out that the role played by Gustavo Petro in consolidating a broad front that brought together all sectors and all possible demands was fundamental.

An open invitation to all sectors

“What [Petro] did was to tell Pacto Histórico, ‘the government cannot only be the Pacto Histórico. If we want to win office and be successful, we must create a broad front which will attract militants and leaders, leaders of other political forces that are not on the left, that are liberals, conservatives, right, center, radical right wingers, who for some reason decide to change how they vote. We must take them in.’ I fully agree with Petro’s position. I think it makes the most sense, politically speaking.”

During the campaign, Petro promoted the formation of a government of unity. He did not promise a communist or a socialist government, nor did he promise to end private property or that only the left would be included. He even promised to develop capitalism in Colombia, “not because we love it, but because first of all we have to move beyond pre-modernity in Colombia—feudalism, the new slavery.” This message was not necessarily intended for his voters, but rather his opponents who already hold national economic and political power.


José Alberto Tejada. Photo: Alina Duarte

The proposal to his team, Pacto Histórico, was for national reconciliation and unity.

This is why Tejada believes that Petro’s administration “cannot be read to be a revolutionary government or one marking a major rupture. It is a government of transition and concerted action. Concerted action means negotiation and when you negotiate, you have to sit down with the leaders of all the different social, political, and economic forces to be able to govern.”

Holding a dialogue with the right and the far-right means that Gustavo Petro has had to talk not only to the outgoing president, Iván Duque, and his defeated opponent, Rodolfo Hernández, but also to former President Álvaro Uribe, one of the men facing the most judicial investigations in Colombia. There are at least 29 cases against him before the Supreme Court, with charges including alleged ties to murders, electoral fraud, and military espionage.


Former President Álvaro Uribe with Gustavo Petro. Photo: Gustavo Petro on Twitter.

At the end of their meeting, Uribe said that Gustavo Petro “insisted that he wants total peace. No one opposes peace, that precious commodity. I also spoke to him about not only the protection of the armed forces and its members, from a different system, but about public problems that require the force of authority, not to repress protesters, but to avoid violence.”

This was the most controversial meeting of the transition period. It sheds doubt about how much maneuvering room Petro might have in a country in which the oligarchy, drug traffickers, and Uribe’s influence have all grown very deep roots.

Still, not everyone agrees that alliances with even the far-right will result in guaranteed governability, even though the Pacto Histórico holds 63 of the 108 seats in the Senate, and 114 of the 186 seats in the House.

According to Héctor Fernández, an activist in Pacto Histórico and member of Colectivo por la Paz en Colombia (Collective for Peace in Colombia), based in Mexico, “while Petro has enough votes to pass the reforms he needs to implement his government platform, it is obvious that this national alliance is a fragile one. It is an alliance that must be tended to in order to maintain unity and allow Petro to govern over the next four years.”

This scenario is not surprising. As we have seen over the past two decades in Latin America and the Caribbean where so-called progressive governments have been in office, Gustavo Petro will also have to cultivate and establish—or not—the limits required to govern once class tensions with the oligarchy and right-wing voters become apparent, beyond any alleged governance pact. What is unique about the Colombian case is that success in steering the national ship will not only require Petro to be shrewd, but to do so in the country with perhaps the most conservative right-wing in the hemisphere, who have blurred the lines between themselves and organized crime, drug trafficking, and United States imperialism.

Given these peculiar waters, Gustavo Petro’s track record and political activism are key.

Gustavo Petro’s path

“The Colombian government had managed to sell to the world the theory that Colombia was a democracy. It was actually a dictatorship, just like that of Pinochet in Chile and Videla in Argentina. We in the M-19 were fighting precisely against that.”

Gustavo Petro, “Una vida, muchas vidas”

Born in Ciénaga de Oro, Córdoba, and holding Italian citizenship thanks to his great-grandfather, Gustavo Petro has a long history of militant activism and public service.


Gustavo Petro protecting himself from death threats during the 2022 presidential campaign. Photo: Gustavo Petro’s Facebook page

Although it has been used against him, it is true that Gustavo Petro joined the guerrillas at age 18 while an economics student. He joined the Movimiento 19 de abril, also known as M-19, where he adopted the pseudonym Aureliano, inspired by a Gabriel García Márquez character. He himself has narrated the nuances of his militancy.

When he joined M-19, Colombia was under a state of siege after an electoral fraud that handed victory to Misael Pastrana. In his book, “Una vida, muchas vidas,” Petro narrates the moment he made the decision that would change his life:

“I was 18 years old at the time. It was 1978 and I had been in university for two years. The idea of joining M-19 scared me. It was not a trivial matter. It meant joining an armed force: I knew that the message of that movement penetrated the souls of the Colombian people like a cannon. The magazine Cromos had conducted a survey and 80% of the population sympathized with M-19. We members of the JG3 had already broken with the student left of Bogotá. We were very independent. Our central debate was whether the path to revolution in Colombia was through armed struggle. We were wondering whether we should join the armed organizations… It all happened very fast. We went from the cafeteria circles to abstract discussion, to be seduced not only by the idea that we should organize ourselves with weapons, but that the organization we should belong to was the M-19… Rationally speaking, M-19’s proposal was very logical and popular: we had to redeem the history of our homeland, the soul of the people. For us it was easy to understand that demand because we lived in that world of the people. The hard part was making the decision to take up arms. We did not know all that would come afterwards; we were only 18 years old. But we did intuit that it was a life-or-death decision.”

For Petro, getting close to the M-19 meant he had to understand and break down its theoretical and practical lines. But he spared no details in recounting the surprise and enchantment he found in the guerrilla movement’s proposal as set forth in its Fifth Conference documents:

“I loved the document. The M-19 articulated the socialist proposals of the traditional left at the time, but it went far beyond that to propose something that still seems obvious but isn’t really: a real democracy for Colombia. That debate between socialism and democracy ran throughout the 20th century. With the appearance of the Soviet world, the idea of democracy was undermined, even ignoring those who had created such theories. The elimination of individual liberty marked the end of the concept of democracy, which was something cherished by the workers’ struggles of the world. And in that debate, a bit removed from the centers of the world, in a country called Colombia, M-19 was opting for democracy. Because that was always the objective: it was a democratic proposal, and that is how it began to be called the search for an alternative for Colombia,” (p. 47).

As a member of the M-19, Gustavo Petro was arrested and tortured in 1985. Two years later, in 1987, he was released. It was not until January of 1989 that the M-19 entered a 14-month long peace process, finally reaching a peace agreement in March of 1990 and becoming the first guerrilla group to lay down its arms in Colombia and achieve political participation through elections. Gustavo Petro participated in that process.

Upon leaving the guerrillas, Petro co-founded the political party Alianza Democrática M-19, which played a key role in the National Constituent Assembly of 1991, a process which resulted in a new constitution for the South American country.

His active political participation led him to the House of Representatives in 1991. Later, under death threats, he left the country and was appointed diplomatic attaché in Brussels, Belgium by the Ernesto Samper administration. He resigned the post in 1996.

On his return to Colombia in 1997, Petro ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Bogotá; one year later he returned to the House of Representatives and was re-elected in 2002. However, faced with another threat to his life, he went into exile in the U.S. capital for three months. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued precautionary measures on his behalf, forcing the Colombian State to provide him with protection.

Petro was catapulted onto the national scene when he served as mayor of Bogotá, but that position was not enough to implement his ideas of national transformation. Twice he ran for President of the Republic of Colombia and lost. But three was the charm when on March 13, 2022 he won the nomination of the Pacto Histórico by taking 80.5% in the primary vote. In second place was Francia Márquez with 14.05% of the vote.

Although they were opponents in the primary, ten days later the Petro/Márquez presidential ticket was born.


Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez. Photo: Gustavo Petro’s Facebook page

Gustavo Petro is an old sea dog. The attempt to cut short his political career through a ploy to remove him as mayor of Bogotá failed. The death threats and persecution that drove him into exile or the underground give him a very unique profile in this hemisphere. He is an activist government official and an activist who is a government official. At the age of 62 he is now at the helm of one of the hemisphere’s biggest countries in terms of paramilitary activity, drug trafficking, and domination by U.S. imperialism.

This is no secret. In the streets of Bogotá, Cali, and Medellín, people recognize an intelligent man with a long political track record, and also a man whose ego is hard to satisfy. But it is clear that his flaws have not slowed him down. He is advancing at a steady pace and the Casa de Nariño awaits him to represent not only his supporters, but also his detractors.

The night of the victory, Gustavo Petro, wearing a blue jacket with brown patches on the elbows, embraced Francia Márquez. An embrace that announced that on the path ahead, He will be accompanied by more than his running mate. Francia Márquez has become an indispensable comrade in struggle not only for Petro, but for The Nobodies of Colombia.

Francia Márquez, the struggle of The Nobodies

I asked people what Francia Márquez means to them.

“For me, Francia Márquez means my color, my skin. She means to work, to struggle for our rights; humility, work, getting ahead, better work opportunities, a better quality of life. For me, she means change since we are coming out of 20 years of a government that has been manipulating us and exploiting the people,” responded Mabel Dayana, a young university student in Cali whose smile reveals the hope deposited at the polls.

There are many men and women who see themselves in Francia Márquez, a black woman born in El Cauca, active member of the feminist movement, and defender of territories. Even though Francia did not imagine herself as the candidate, advocating for a collective project rather than an elected position, this propelled her onto the platform.

Francia Elena Márquez Mina is the daughter of miners and farmers. Before she showed up for the first vice-presidential debate, she already had a long track record as a militant and member of social movements.


Mabel Dayana, Cali, Colombia. Photo: Alina Duarte.

As a teenager, Francia Elena provided for her two children by working in artisanal gold mining and as a domestic worker in the city of Cali. Her struggle to defend territories goes back to her native Suárez, where she was a representative of the Community Council in the village of La Toma. There she was a firm opponent of the illegal and destructive mining that resulted in the forced displacement of her community and death threats against her, which failed to stop her.

Many women and men in Colombia remember her as part of the “March of the Turbans,” a long and combative mobilization in 2017 in which 70,000 Afro-Colombian women marched from the municipality of Suárez to Bogotá to demand collective titles to their ancestral land, and the right to a life with dignity.

She insists on defending the land and calls it “the big home” or “the greater womb.” This not only led her to receive the Colombian National Prize for the Defense of Human Rights in 2015, but also caught the attention of international activists. In 2018 she was awarded the Goldman Prize, considered the Nobel Prize for the environment, and in 2019 she was awarded the Joan Alsina Prize in Spain.

Despite this national and international attention, and her imminent vice-presidency, Francia Márquez is still attentive to those who communicate with her. She smiles, says hello, and hugs.

I was among a group of journalists visiting Colombia on a mission with Global Exchange, to whom she gifted 24 minutes of her time. Francia talked about being from the Colombian people who have experienced and confronted racism, exclusion, and the imposition of an economic model sold to them as “development.” Such “development,” Márquez said, has taken the country down a virtually impossible path which has led to Colombians killing each other and a war that persists to the present day.

“I represent the voices of the grandmothers who wanted a change for this country; many died waiting for it. Others now say: ‘I thought I would die and not live to see the change.’ We are engaged in a struggle for dignity and justice for our people, of men and women who have historically fought for equality, for peace, for social justice, for human dignity, for the struggle to care for our land as a space for life, the big home, the greater womb.”


Francia Márquez before the first round of voting. Photo: Alina Duarte

Francia provokes many reactions, and even emotions in some latitudes.

In Medellín, the land of Álvaro Uribe and Pablo Escobar, there is little evidence of support for Petro and Francia. It is almost impossible to find any of their campaign materials. That makes it even more striking that a large yellow house in the El Prado neighborhood has large letters spelling out PETRO on top of it, in capital letters.

It is the headquarters of Comunes, the party created by former combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the venue for our meeting with Carlos Orlas, a journalist and member of that party.

Carlos is able to describe what Colombia is going through with all the proper grammar and punctuation and agility of a disciplined journalist who is also a peace activist. The deaths, disappearances, the false positives and the persecution of former combatant men and women warrant serious attention. But when he is asked what Francia Márquez means to him, the solemn mood is broken and his face cannot hide the hope that the future vice-president inspires in him.


Carlos Orlas, journalist and member of the Comunes party in Medellín. Photo: Alina Duarte

“Francia represents the land, the land that has suffered so much but has still blossomed; the land that resists. It is not that she talks about a life project around defending life, the rivers, the mountains, and that she shows this with her actions. It is not just a policy formulated around saying this. Rather this is what she has done, and that is very compelling. Francia is the people. She is an elder woman and we must value this because that is really new here. We have always been governed by the elites from Bogotá, with some interludes for the elites of Antioquia. But a woman who comes from such strong roots in El Cauca—where Colombia’s mightiest rivers spring in the Colombian Massif—is key. That woman is pure love.”

Not only is Francia synonymous with love among her supporters, so is her slogan “vivir sabroso” (living the good life). This simple phrase shook up the Colombian elites at the same time that it spurred empathy and unity among those historically excluded.

“For our people, Vivir Sabroso means living in community, living in a collective construction of seeing ourselves as an extended family. It means living with nature and acknowledging that we are part of it and live in harmony with it if we as a people establish rules for our relationship with nature. Vivir Sabroso means the end of war in this country. It means to live without fear, that we women can go down to the corner without fear of being raped or killed. That young people will not have their eyes shot out because they are demanding education in this country.

To live without fear is to live with rights, to live in peace, to live with joy; to be able to express oneself through art, culture, and sports. It is to be able to enjoy the rich biodiversity we have in this country. That is what Vivir Sabroso means. And we have enjoyed this in the Pacific coast region of Colombia when we play the marimba, when we go and drink “bichi” and begin to talk about ourselves.”


The “nobodies” participating in the presidential campaign to support Petro and Márquez. Photo: Alina Duarte.

Francia has made it clear. Hers is a collective struggle and is summarized by her phrase, “I am because we are.” It is also the constant cry of a Black woman fighting with other women for a world of equals.

Clearly, in the coming years it will not suffice to want to vivir sabroso, or simply insist that “I am because we are.” The battle lines are drawn. Márquez will go from being opposition to serving in government, with the great challenge this implies. The challenge is to take the struggle that she has been waging for at least two decades, a collective struggle, beyond the polls and beyond narratives.

“Colombia will turn into Venezuela”: the battle over narratives

“Our approach was to defend peace, but Uribe’s people came back into power. How did that happen? Through fear, with rhetoric about Venezuela. The only way they could achieve that popular majority was based on a lie and not a proposal. During Uribe’s first and second terms, the mantra was destruction of the FARC, which somehow appealed to a society that felt threatened. But in 2018 they proposed nothing. They simply got people to think that if I won, Colombia would turn into Venezuela. That was all.”

Gustavo Petro, Una vida muchas vidas.

The specter of “turning into Venezuela,” present in political debates over the past two decades throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, had to be present in Colombia, specifically regarding candidate Gustavo Petro.

Media claims that Petro was and is synonymous with Venezuela did not start in 2022. The media battle over “Venezuelanization”—as Petro himself said in his book Una vida muchas vidas—started years earlier. He specifically pinpoints the 2018 presidential campaign, after the media had worn out, but did not desist from, other narratives such as his alleged relationship with the FARC.

One of the main people in charge of attacking the incoming president was former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, one of the most recalcitrant opponents of Gustavo Petro.

Months prior to the election, with several media outlets present, Uribe said that with Gustavo Petro “Colombia could have the worst neo-communism in the region because Mr. Petro is much smarter than [Hugo] Chávez, Mr. Petro is much smarter than [Pedro] Castillo, than President [Alberto] Fernández of Argentina, and Mr. Petro is much smarter than Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. That is why I have stated very thoughtfully that Chávez was not the teacher; it was Petro who taught Chávez. Colombia could have the most dangerous communism in the region because it has the smartest neo-communist leader, who is Mr. Petro.”

However, despite the barrage of corporate media reports asserting that the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Gustavo Petro had close ties, the only record of an encounter between the two occurred in 1994.


Gustavo Petro and Hugo Chávez, 1994. Photo: social media

After his incarceration following a failed coup attempt in 1992, Hugo Chávez was released in 1994 and attended an event on Bolivarian thought at the Simón Rodríguez Cultural Foundation in Bogotá.

But such evidence is not enough to discredit the campaign about the “Venezuelanization” that Gustavo Petro would purportedly usher in.

Days before the runoff election, the cover of Semana, one of Colombia’s largest circulating magazines, showed the faces of the now defeated Rodolfo Hernández and Gustavo Petro, with a headline that took up 1/3 of the space: “Former Guerilla or Engineer?”

That was not all. Days before the first round of voting, opinion columns in that magazine alleged the same thing. One of them, signed by Semana columnist Maria Andrea Nieto ran the headline, “Colombia is not Venezuela!” It sought to convince readers that despite Colombia’s systematic violence which in 2022 alone, as of May 29, had seen 108 human rights defenders assassinated, 53 massacres and 28 assassinations of signers of the failed peace accords, Colombia was more democratic than Venezuela, no buts about it.

However, Venezuela is still one of the cards played in such “arguments.”’

Before the election was even held, in another issue of the same publication, Salud Hernández Mora published a piece under the headline, “Will Petro Accept another Defeat?” According to this author, the Pacto Histórico is the only one capable of “setting the streets on fire and stomping on democracy.”


Opinion column in Semana magazine before the first round of voting in May of 2022.

Even with most of the headlines in the corporate media against it, the Pacto Histórico showed that a break with the past is possible. In a country with just over 39 million registered voters, 11,291,986 voted for the Pacto Histórico.

The “Venezuelanization” narrative, scandalous magazine covers, and scurrilous headlines were all unable to stem the tide of popular indignation.

Colombia is, and will again be, part of Latin America and the Caribbean.

“The United States seems destined by providence
to plague the Americas with suffering in the name of freedom.”

Simón Bolívar

It is not surprising and is even understandable that Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez have refrained from showing any sympathy toward the so-called progressive governments of Latin America and the Caribbean, given the extensive, over-the-top media campaign being waged against them by the right and far-right of not only Colombia, but the world. However, and contrary to the expectations of the regional left itself, a few weeks have sufficed to see which way the winds are blowing in Colombia’s foreign policy.

If we start from the premise that Colombia’s relationship of economic, political, and military dependence on the United States will far from end during the Pacto Histórico’s term, we understand why one of the first foreign delegations to establish a dialogue with the incoming government was the Biden administration.


Jonathan Finer, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor, meeting with Petro. Petro’s Facebook page.

Colombia, the main U.S. military ally in the region, hosts seven U.S. military bases in its territory. And economically, it is undeniable that Colombia’s leading trade partner is the United States.

Jonathan Finer, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor, headed the delegation that met with the president-elect to ensure that they covered “the full range of issues in the bilateral relationship … including combating climate change, economic development, migration, security, counter narcotics, and many, many other issues. We hope to work closely with the president-elect and his team, including the vice-president elect.”

Petro described the meeting in positive terms as “interest in building around common work, among equal partners, trying to lay the groundwork that allows us to more effectively resolve issues, circumstances, and situations that weigh on the Americas.”

The new government’s relationship with Venezuela

While, for the time being, joint statements with the U.S. government do not mark a 180-degree turn, there are some actions which specifically have marked a change in the government-elect’s foreign policy: its relationship with Venezuela.

After two decades of open hostility towards Colombia’s neighbor, a new stage seems to be opening in bilateral relations. The incoming administration announced its willingness to re-establish relations between the two countries, exchange ambassadors, and thereby reopen the borders which were closed as part of the regional siege against the government of Nicolás Maduro.


Venezuelan Foreign Minister Carlos Faria with Colombia’s Foreign-Minister designate, Álvaro Leyva, July 28 on the Colombia-Venezuela border in Táchira. Photo: Carlos Faria on Twitter.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Carlos Faria met this past July 28th with the Foreign Minister proposed by the government-elect of Colombia, Álvaro Leyva. Faria expressed “a willingness to gradually move toward normalization of relations between our two countries, resuming our historical ties of friendship, cooperation, and complementarity.”

Venezuela may be the most significant change in Colombia’s new foreign policy, but it is not the only one.

As a sort of foreign minister of the Colombian left, Francia Márquez has sought to establish ties with governments and leaders of the Latin American left and with social movements and organizations in the region.

In a tour of South America, Márquez outlined the ideological sympathies of the incoming administration.

Her first stop was Brazil. To the great joy of both, leader Francia did not hold back from yelling “Viva Lula” in a moment which could only be interpreted as support for the campaign of the former Brazilian president in the upcoming October 2 vote. All indications are that Lula will be returned to office.


Lula and Francia Márquez this past July 26th. Photo: Francia Márquez on Twitter

Francia also took advantage of her stop in Río de Janeiro to establish ties with the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Landless Workers Movement-MST), with activists, and with the Afro-Brazilian community—specifically with Black women running for the legislature in that South American country.

Further south, she was received by former Argentinian president and current Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirschner, as well as the current President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández. Francia Márquez did not hesitate to approach the local social movements in an encounter that gave a glimpse of some of the priorities on her agenda, such as the legalization of drugs.

Before a packed auditorium that also included Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Nora Cortiñas, a Mother of the Plaza de Mayo, Márquez stated:

“May Colombia lead a debate in the region about a path towards legalization of drugs. I understand that the approach of criminalizing them has had negative impacts, especially on the rights of impoverished and racialized populations, women, young people, and ethnic peoples. These are the ones who have been disproportionately impacted by such policies.”

After Argentina, Márquez headed to Chile, where she was received by President Gabriel Boric. The support offered by the Chilean president was noteworthy. The vice-president-elect welcomed the fact that Boric “has not only expressed his willingness to accompany us in the task of attaining peace, but has offered his home, Chile, to be a venue for peace talks between the Colombian State and the National Liberation Army (ELN).”

And if Márquez’ South American tour sought to strengthen ties with progressive movements, governments, and prominent figures, Bolivia could not be left out.

During his meeting with Francia, President Luis Arce Catacora said that “southern winds are blowing more strongly and strengthening the Patria Grande (Great Homeland).” And former President Evo Morales said that they shared “experiences from the long struggle for the rights of the people most impoverished and excluded by neoliberal policies.”


[Screenshots of tweets by Francia Márquez: “I was happy to meet with @evoespueblo, teacher of life. From him we learned about the dignity of our people, to stand firm despite adversity. Today the struggle of the Bolivian and Colombian people is united to acknowledge that in our differences is a united and sovereign Latin America,” and by Evo Morales: “The beautiful words of Francia Márquez M pay homage to the Bolivian people. We are pleased because now, together with brother @gustavopetro, Colombia is advancing towards unity in diversity, redeeming the plurinationality of Latin America.”]

Bolivia was no exception in terms of Francia’s outreach to social movements. Surrounded by women, workers, peasants, indigenous people, community feminism activists, Márquez was welcomed with open arms.


Head of Government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, with Francia Márquez, Zoom conference.
And although Mexico was not on Francia Márquez’ Latin American tour, the support of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is undeniable. Just a few hours after the electoral victory he congratulated the government-elect and took a lot of time during his morning press conference on June 20th to say that he had spoken to Gustavo Petro on the phone and that his victory was historic.

A less visible meeting that also happened was a zoom call between the vice-president-elect and the Head of Government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, on July 7th. Sheinbaum described Márquez as a “symbol of struggle, inclusion, love, and hope for all of Latin America, especially women.”

In the few short weeks of the transition period while an administration was put together, the foreign policy priorities of the new Colombian government have become crystal clear. Petro and Márquez will seek to be part of the Latin America that has often been denied to Colombia because of U.S. influence.


The author of this analysis, Alina Duarte, with Francia Márquez.

The Pacto Histórico will also be among the peoples of the region.

The coin toss

The Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez administration faces the coming challenge of a country profoundly marked by the unraveling of the social fabric, and by a political, ideological, and electoral right wing that will have a hard time separating itself from the paramilitaries, drug traffickers, and the interests of U.S. imperialism.

The Pacto Histórico government will have an historic duty to open new paths in a country that is still seeking peace, but has not yet found it.

Between the date when the Cartagena de Indias Peace Accords were signed, September 26, 2016, and July 29, 2022, 1,335 leaders and human rights defenders were murdered. 319 massacres were committed and at least 334 signers of the peace accords were assassinated, while unofficial estimates speak of more than 600.

That is where the light of the Pacto Histórico—The Nobodies—shines.

They have alliances, conscience, and bravery on their side. They have allied governments that have spared no efforts in establishing networks to help bring Colombia and the Patria Grande out of the long, dark night of neoliberalism.

The Nobodies want to be in government and they will be. But they want and can be more than that.


Mural on the streets of Cali. Photo: Alina Duarte

Alina Duarte is a journalist and Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, COHA.

This analysis was edited by COHA Director, Patricio Zamorano.

This article was translated from the original Spanish by Jill Clark-Gollub, COHA Assistant Editor/Translator.

[Main photo: Gustavo Petro’s Facebook page]

[1] Translated by Cedric Belfrage with some edits by COHA.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... -analysis/

The US War on Drugs Isn’t What it Seems – and Colombia’s New President Wants to End it
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 14, 2022
Bradley Blankenship


Gustavo Petro promises a major blow to US hegemony over Latin America

Leftist Gustavo Petro was inaugurated as Colombia’s new president on August 7, ushering in what will likely be an unprecedented political swing for what is a perennially right-wing government. In his first address, Petro mentioned many important issues that face Colombia including climate change, poverty, education and, notably, the so-called ‘War on Drugs.’

“It’s time for a new international convention that accepts that the War on Drugs has resoundingly failed and that it has left one million Latin Americans murdered, most of them Colombians, during the last 40 years, and that kills 70,000 people in North America from overdoses annually with drugs, none of which are produced in Latin America,” he said.

Petro added that this war “has strengthened the mafias and weakened states,” while leading “states to commit crimes,” including the Colombian state. He called for a new paradigm that “allows life and doesn’t generate death” while also putting blame on the United States for having the ability to change global anti-drug policy but failing to do so.

This is a truly game-changing declaration from Petro because Colombia is far and away the most important partner in the US-led War on Drugs. Colombia rejecting the existing status quo would send a shockwave through the international community and could set up multilateral discussions on a new strategy that does not focus on a military-first response.

To note, Petro knows a thing or two about the War on Drugs given his previous connection to the now-defunct left-wing paramilitary group, M-19. This war has been noted for its deep contradictions, namely the fact that US military aid and training to Colombia has focused more on anti-communism – that is, putting down groups like M-19 – than on combating the drug trade.

The US has sent military aid to groups in Colombia, including the Colombian military, that have committed well-documented human rights abuses. The Clinton administration even waived most of the human-rights conditions normally attached to such aid, deeming it crucial to US national security. Washington also hyper-focuses attention on combating left-wing groups in Colombia while supporting right-wing groups, e.g., those that support US capital, even if they have connections to the drug trade.

As a notable example, former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who received the US’ highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from former US President George Bush, was identified by US intelligence as tied to the country’s drug trade. He remains a powerful player in Colombian politics and was Washington’s main conduit in the region during his tenure from 2002-2010.

On top of these contradictions that are associated with Cold War politics, Petro also correctly noted the internal contradictions of the US-led War on Drugs. The domestic policy of prohibition is not working and people are dying left and right. US life expectancy is declining due in no small part to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic; however, endemic poverty and drugs are contributing the most to the total lost life years.

This is a point of particular importance for me personally, as I have noted in my column for RT at various points. Having been born in Cincinnati, Ohio and growing up in Northern Kentucky, essentially the epicenter of the US opiate crisis, I have seen the devastating effects of these drugs first-hand. I know families that have been ripped apart, I’ve seen the destitution of addiction and even lost around a dozen of my peers to overdoses, suicide or gang-related murder.

One thing I can say for sure is that the status quo isn’t working. If anything, it simply creates a feedback loop where recidivism and relapse are inevitable – all while private rehabilitation facilities and large pharmaceutical companies profit on the back end. The inevitable outcome, as is ever the case in the United States, is the criminalization of poverty – because low household income is perhaps the most important indicator of substance abuse.

This is a particularly important point because it shows the intersection of contradictions with the War on Drugs domestically and internationally. Namely, the war is an extension of the backward, neoliberal Washington regime and its quest to crush all social movements – whether those at home or abroad – that challenge the American dictatorship of the wealthy.

This empire has revealed itself to not only be morally unjust to those most affected by its proclivity to commit unspeakable crimes but also unreliable, irresponsible and unstable. As US imperialism continues its inevitable downward trajectory, windows of opportunities will present themselves to change existing policies that do not fit the interests of the international community. President Gustavo Petro’s call for a new international anti-drug paradigm is one such example.



https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... to-end-it/

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Colombia’s President Petro: Guaidó’s Presidency is Non-Existent
ORINOCOTRIBUNE AUGUST 16, 2022


Former deputy Juan Guaidó in a defeated posture. Photo: Reuters/Manaure Quintero.

On Sunday, August 14, during a conversation with a journalist from the Colombian news outlet Semana, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said that it is time for the normalization of relations with Venezuela to be reflected in binational trade and production.

“There is already a normal flow, now we have to expand that to the issue of trade, to the issue of production,” said the Colombian president in relation to progress in resuming diplomatic relations with Venezuela.

On Thursday, August 11, Caracas and Bogotá appointed ambassadors to consolidate the reestablishment of diplomatic ties, fractured during the outgoing administration of Iván Duque, who decided to ignore the Constitutional president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and ally himself with the self-proclaimed Juan Guaidó, following Washington’s strategy to oust the legitimate Venezuelan president.

President Petro was asked about Colombia’s support for Guaidó as head of state. Petro responded by recalling Plato’s allegory of the caves. As in the Platonic tale, he said, the reality of Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela is made of pure shadows, it is non-existent.

The president of Colombia added that the former Popular Will deputy “has no control of anything in Venezuela.”

CAVECOL expects to formalize procedures

The president of the Chamber of Venezuelan–Colombian Economic Integration (CAVECOL), Luis Alberto Russián, stated that the chamber has positive expectations about the resumption of commercial relationship between both nations.

In addition, Russián pointed out that CAVECOL is confident that the policies and measures to govern the economic sphere can be maintained in the medium and long term.

In the same way, he expressed his belief that if the commercial relationship is established through binational agreements, the need to demand customs imports duties can begin to be evaluated, including compliance with sanitary requirements and permits, and trade can continue with the supervision and controls that are required.

In recent days, many businesses in Venezuela have raised concerns about an abrupt trade opening, as this may jeopardize their operations in certain areas. These sectors, such as the plastic bags sector, have been requesting special protection from the Venezuelan government via import duties, in order to allow them to be more competitive with Colombian producers.

https://orinocotribune.com/colombias-pr ... -existent/

[blindpig]

The Nobodies Take Office in Colombia: An In-Depth Analysis
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 12, 2022
Alina Duarte



Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and the nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on them–will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms.

The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.

Who are not, although they are.
Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.
Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.
Who don’t create art, but handicrafts.
Who don’t have culture, but folklore.
Who are not human beings, but human resources.
Who do not have faces, but arms.
Who do not have names, but numbers.
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police blotter of the local paper.

The nobodies, who are worth less than the bullet that kills them.

The Nobodies

By Eduardo Galeano[1]



June 19, electoral victory

People are crying, embracing, yelling, as the streets fill with joy. Horns honk and people dance in the middle of avenues. They can’t believe that the news traveling by word of mouth, tweet to tweet, news show to news show, is really true. As the minutes and hours pass, they confirm that it is true: This June 19th they—the Nobodies—have won.

“I am tingling from head to toes, overcome with emotion because I know that this is an historic accomplishment for all of us to remember. What joy! What happiness! Until dignity becomes customary!” says Ana Yuli Gamboa with a big smile—an Afro-Colombian woman from Cali who has come out to celebrate.

Like Ana Yuli, little by little thousands took to the streets and plazas of the country to celebrate the victory of the Pacto Histórico, a victory that tastes like their own.


Ana Yuli Gamboa. Photo: Alina Duarte

“After 214 years we finally have a government of the people—a people’s government, a government of people with calloused hands, a government of ordinary people, a government of The Nobodies of Colombia. Sisters and brothers, let us bring reconciliation to this nation. Let’s go for peace in a decisive way, with love and joy; let’s go for dignity. I am the first woman vice-president of Colombia; I am your vice-president,” said Francia Márquez before thousands in Bogotá after the victory of the Pacto Histórico was confirmed. Many more women and men saw her on screens, heard her on the radio, and followed her words on social media in the rest of the country and the rest of the hemisphere.

A few minutes later came the sentence that many had been waiting years to hear, “I am Gustavo Petro and I am your president.” That was when the Movistar Arena in Bogotá reverberated in response to the next occupant of the Palacio de Nariño.

I was in Cali, salsa capital of the world, when I witnessed these tears of joy and dancing. The band Niche’s anthem “Cali Pachanguero” was tapped out in the horns announcing the victory. And between tears, hundreds of Colombian men and women made these victorious words their own: it is the dawning of a new era for the country, the era of the Pacto.

The Pacto Histórico: a one-of-a kind alliance

The Pacto Histórico was officially born on February 11, 2021. Political figures on the left and center-left announced this alliance which would first seek to consolidate a position that could win a legislative majority in Congress, and second, produce a candidate who could win the presidency. The Pacto Histórico succeeded.

What was unique about this coalition was the members it brought together. It was not a mere alliance among political parties, but also included social movements from a broad range of the ideological spectrum.

Colombia Humana (Humane Colombia), Polo Democrático Alternativo (Alternative Democratic Pole), Movimiento Alternativo Indígena y Social (Alternative Indigenous and Social Movement), Unión Patriótica-Partido Comunista (Patriotic Union-Communist Party), Todos Somos Colombia (We Are All Colombia), and Congreso de los Pueblos y Comunes (Congress of Peoples and Communes—a party founded by former FARC combatants), are just some of the groups that answered the call.

However, young people, women, peasants, trade unionists, Colombian men and women from the historically excluded segments of society—the periphery, the poorest neighborhoods, the working class—soon organically showed up for this appointment with history. The Pacto was joined by The Nobodies, the people who didn’ hesitate to go out into the streets in April of 2021 when President Iván Duque threatened to implement a tax reform package that would benefit only the ruling class. This time thousands and thousands of them took to the streets.

Nationally, more than 70 people who raised their voices did so at the cost of their own lives, while hundreds refused to back down despite the brutal repression of the police forces.

One of the main trenches of struggle in Cali was Puerto Resistencia, a place where fearless youths came together, with hundreds of them forming a “front line.” For months on end, they stood firm for a new Colombia, even though some of their comrades were murdered before their very eyes during this dark period.

Such was the case of “Wao,” a young man from Cali who after months of marches, road blocks, repression and persecution, felt that it was all worth it. On the night of June 19th, despite the possibility that the police would arrest him for his activism, he did not hesitate one second in going out to celebrate the victory together with hundreds of other young people.


“Panda” and “Wao”, activists at Puerto Resistencia, Cali. Photo: Alina Duarte.

“This victory by Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez is our victory, because here in Puerto Resistencia we have bet absolutely everything on this. We have shown leadership, inner city youth programs, building this with the people … We are showing that yes, we can. Yes, we can make a change for the good of our children’s future. This fills my heart, I feel it here in my chest, I tell you sincerely.”

On the night of the victory, Gustavo Petro thanked those young people and also asked for the release of those who are still incarcerated—words which brought great joy to the resistance in Cali. “To be honest with you, that was an act of bravery, from the heart. They know and believe in us, that we represent change,” said Wao with a lump in his throat.

We cannot forget that the social uprising that lasted almost a year at different levels of intensity, occurred immediately prior to the taking of power by the Pacto Histórico.

The repressive response by the police exacerbated the social indignation for almost ten months. There were constant protests, which were met with constant repression. But what was even more important was the massive level of organization and consciousness raising among the Colombian people.


José Alberto Tejada and the young people of Puerto Resistencia in Cali. Photo: Alina Duarte

José Alberto Tejada, a journalist who covered the social uprising in Cali and now serves as a member of Congress for the Pacto Histórico, points out that the role played by Gustavo Petro in consolidating a broad front that brought together all sectors and all possible demands was fundamental.

An open invitation to all sectors

“What [Petro] did was to tell Pacto Histórico, ‘the government cannot only be the Pacto Histórico. If we want to win office and be successful, we must create a broad front which will attract militants and leaders, leaders of other political forces that are not on the left, that are liberals, conservatives, right, center, radical right wingers, who for some reason decide to change how they vote. We must take them in.’ I fully agree with Petro’s position. I think it makes the most sense, politically speaking.”

During the campaign, Petro promoted the formation of a government of unity. He did not promise a communist or a socialist government, nor did he promise to end private property or that only the left would be included. He even promised to develop capitalism in Colombia, “not because we love it, but because first of all we have to move beyond pre-modernity in Colombia—feudalism, the new slavery.” This message was not necessarily intended for his voters, but rather his opponents who already hold national economic and political power.


José Alberto Tejada. Photo: Alina Duarte

The proposal to his team, Pacto Histórico, was for national reconciliation and unity.

This is why Tejada believes that Petro’s administration “cannot be read to be a revolutionary government or one marking a major rupture. It is a government of transition and concerted action. Concerted action means negotiation and when you negotiate, you have to sit down with the leaders of all the different social, political, and economic forces to be able to govern.”

Holding a dialogue with the right and the far-right means that Gustavo Petro has had to talk not only to the outgoing president, Iván Duque, and his defeated opponent, Rodolfo Hernández, but also to former President Álvaro Uribe, one of the men facing the most judicial investigations in Colombia. There are at least 29 cases against him before the Supreme Court, with charges including alleged ties to murders, electoral fraud, and military espionage.


Former President Álvaro Uribe with Gustavo Petro. Photo: Gustavo Petro on Twitter.

At the end of their meeting, Uribe said that Gustavo Petro “insisted that he wants total peace. No one opposes peace, that precious commodity. I also spoke to him about not only the protection of the armed forces and its members, from a different system, but about public problems that require the force of authority, not to repress protesters, but to avoid violence.”

This was the most controversial meeting of the transition period. It sheds doubt about how much maneuvering room Petro might have in a country in which the oligarchy, drug traffickers, and Uribe’s influence have all grown very deep roots.

Still, not everyone agrees that alliances with even the far-right will result in guaranteed governability, even though the Pacto Histórico holds 63 of the 108 seats in the Senate, and 114 of the 186 seats in the House.

According to Héctor Fernández, an activist in Pacto Histórico and member of Colectivo por la Paz en Colombia (Collective for Peace in Colombia), based in Mexico, “while Petro has enough votes to pass the reforms he needs to implement his government platform, it is obvious that this national alliance is a fragile one. It is an alliance that must be tended to in order to maintain unity and allow Petro to govern over the next four years.”

This scenario is not surprising. As we have seen over the past two decades in Latin America and the Caribbean where so-called progressive governments have been in office, Gustavo Petro will also have to cultivate and establish—or not—the limits required to govern once class tensions with the oligarchy and right-wing voters become apparent, beyond any alleged governance pact. What is unique about the Colombian case is that success in steering the national ship will not only require Petro to be shrewd, but to do so in the country with perhaps the most conservative right-wing in the hemisphere, who have blurred the lines between themselves and organized crime, drug trafficking, and United States imperialism.

Given these peculiar waters, Gustavo Petro’s track record and political activism are key.

Gustavo Petro’s path

“The Colombian government had managed to sell to the world the theory that Colombia was a democracy. It was actually a dictatorship, just like that of Pinochet in Chile and Videla in Argentina. We in the M-19 were fighting precisely against that.”

Gustavo Petro, “Una vida, muchas vidas”

Born in Ciénaga de Oro, Córdoba, and holding Italian citizenship thanks to his great-grandfather, Gustavo Petro has a long history of militant activism and public service.


Gustavo Petro protecting himself from death threats during the 2022 presidential campaign. Photo: Gustavo Petro’s Facebook page

Although it has been used against him, it is true that Gustavo Petro joined the guerrillas at age 18 while an economics student. He joined the Movimiento 19 de abril, also known as M-19, where he adopted the pseudonym Aureliano, inspired by a Gabriel García Márquez character. He himself has narrated the nuances of his militancy.

When he joined M-19, Colombia was under a state of siege after an electoral fraud that handed victory to Misael Pastrana. In his book, “Una vida, muchas vidas,” Petro narrates the moment he made the decision that would change his life:

“I was 18 years old at the time. It was 1978 and I had been in university for two years. The idea of joining M-19 scared me. It was not a trivial matter. It meant joining an armed force: I knew that the message of that movement penetrated the souls of the Colombian people like a cannon. The magazine Cromos had conducted a survey and 80% of the population sympathized with M-19. We members of the JG3 had already broken with the student left of Bogotá. We were very independent. Our central debate was whether the path to revolution in Colombia was through armed struggle. We were wondering whether we should join the armed organizations… It all happened very fast. We went from the cafeteria circles to abstract discussion, to be seduced not only by the idea that we should organize ourselves with weapons, but that the organization we should belong to was the M-19… Rationally speaking, M-19’s proposal was very logical and popular: we had to redeem the history of our homeland, the soul of the people. For us it was easy to understand that demand because we lived in that world of the people. The hard part was making the decision to take up arms. We did not know all that would come afterwards; we were only 18 years old. But we did intuit that it was a life-or-death decision.”

For Petro, getting close to the M-19 meant he had to understand and break down its theoretical and practical lines. But he spared no details in recounting the surprise and enchantment he found in the guerrilla movement’s proposal as set forth in its Fifth Conference documents:

“I loved the document. The M-19 articulated the socialist proposals of the traditional left at the time, but it went far beyond that to propose something that still seems obvious but isn’t really: a real democracy for Colombia. That debate between socialism and democracy ran throughout the 20th century. With the appearance of the Soviet world, the idea of democracy was undermined, even ignoring those who had created such theories. The elimination of individual liberty marked the end of the concept of democracy, which was something cherished by the workers’ struggles of the world. And in that debate, a bit removed from the centers of the world, in a country called Colombia, M-19 was opting for democracy. Because that was always the objective: it was a democratic proposal, and that is how it began to be called the search for an alternative for Colombia,” (p. 47).

As a member of the M-19, Gustavo Petro was arrested and tortured in 1985. Two years later, in 1987, he was released. It was not until January of 1989 that the M-19 entered a 14-month long peace process, finally reaching a peace agreement in March of 1990 and becoming the first guerrilla group to lay down its arms in Colombia and achieve political participation through elections. Gustavo Petro participated in that process.

Upon leaving the guerrillas, Petro co-founded the political party Alianza Democrática M-19, which played a key role in the National Constituent Assembly of 1991, a process which resulted in a new constitution for the South American country.

His active political participation led him to the House of Representatives in 1991. Later, under death threats, he left the country and was appointed diplomatic attaché in Brussels, Belgium by the Ernesto Samper administration. He resigned the post in 1996.

On his return to Colombia in 1997, Petro ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Bogotá; one year later he returned to the House of Representatives and was re-elected in 2002. However, faced with another threat to his life, he went into exile in the U.S. capital for three months. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued precautionary measures on his behalf, forcing the Colombian State to provide him with protection.

Petro was catapulted onto the national scene when he served as mayor of Bogotá, but that position was not enough to implement his ideas of national transformation. Twice he ran for President of the Republic of Colombia and lost. But three was the charm when on March 13, 2022 he won the nomination of the Pacto Histórico by taking 80.5% in the primary vote. In second place was Francia Márquez with 14.05% of the vote.

Although they were opponents in the primary, ten days later the Petro/Márquez presidential ticket was born.


Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez. Photo: Gustavo Petro’s Facebook page

Gustavo Petro is an old sea dog. The attempt to cut short his political career through a ploy to remove him as mayor of Bogotá failed. The death threats and persecution that drove him into exile or the underground give him a very unique profile in this hemisphere. He is an activist government official and an activist who is a government official. At the age of 62 he is now at the helm of one of the hemisphere’s biggest countries in terms of paramilitary activity, drug trafficking, and domination by U.S. imperialism.

This is no secret. In the streets of Bogotá, Cali, and Medellín, people recognize an intelligent man with a long political track record, and also a man whose ego is hard to satisfy. But it is clear that his flaws have not slowed him down. He is advancing at a steady pace and the Casa de Nariño awaits him to represent not only his supporters, but also his detractors.

The night of the victory, Gustavo Petro, wearing a blue jacket with brown patches on the elbows, embraced Francia Márquez. An embrace that announced that on the path ahead, He will be accompanied by more than his running mate. Francia Márquez has become an indispensable comrade in struggle not only for Petro, but for The Nobodies of Colombia.

Francia Márquez, the struggle of The Nobodies

I asked people what Francia Márquez means to them.

“For me, Francia Márquez means my color, my skin. She means to work, to struggle for our rights; humility, work, getting ahead, better work opportunities, a better quality of life. For me, she means change since we are coming out of 20 years of a government that has been manipulating us and exploiting the people,” responded Mabel Dayana, a young university student in Cali whose smile reveals the hope deposited at the polls.

There are many men and women who see themselves in Francia Márquez, a black woman born in El Cauca, active member of the feminist movement, and defender of territories. Even though Francia did not imagine herself as the candidate, advocating for a collective project rather than an elected position, this propelled her onto the platform.

Francia Elena Márquez Mina is the daughter of miners and farmers. Before she showed up for the first vice-presidential debate, she already had a long track record as a militant and member of social movements.


Mabel Dayana, Cali, Colombia. Photo: Alina Duarte.

As a teenager, Francia Elena provided for her two children by working in artisanal gold mining and as a domestic worker in the city of Cali. Her struggle to defend territories goes back to her native Suárez, where she was a representative of the Community Council in the village of La Toma. There she was a firm opponent of the illegal and destructive mining that resulted in the forced displacement of her community and death threats against her, which failed to stop her.

Many women and men in Colombia remember her as part of the “March of the Turbans,” a long and combative mobilization in 2017 in which 70,000 Afro-Colombian women marched from the municipality of Suárez to Bogotá to demand collective titles to their ancestral land, and the right to a life with dignity.

She insists on defending the land and calls it “the big home” or “the greater womb.” This not only led her to receive the Colombian National Prize for the Defense of Human Rights in 2015, but also caught the attention of international activists. In 2018 she was awarded the Goldman Prize, considered the Nobel Prize for the environment, and in 2019 she was awarded the Joan Alsina Prize in Spain.

Despite this national and international attention, and her imminent vice-presidency, Francia Márquez is still attentive to those who communicate with her. She smiles, says hello, and hugs.

I was among a group of journalists visiting Colombia on a mission with Global Exchange, to whom she gifted 24 minutes of her time. Francia talked about being from the Colombian people who have experienced and confronted racism, exclusion, and the imposition of an economic model sold to them as “development.” Such “development,” Márquez said, has taken the country down a virtually impossible path which has led to Colombians killing each other and a war that persists to the present day.

“I represent the voices of the grandmothers who wanted a change for this country; many died waiting for it. Others now say: ‘I thought I would die and not live to see the change.’ We are engaged in a struggle for dignity and justice for our people, of men and women who have historically fought for equality, for peace, for social justice, for human dignity, for the struggle to care for our land as a space for life, the big home, the greater womb.”


Francia Márquez before the first round of voting. Photo: Alina Duarte

Francia provokes many reactions, and even emotions in some latitudes.

In Medellín, the land of Álvaro Uribe and Pablo Escobar, there is little evidence of support for Petro and Francia. It is almost impossible to find any of their campaign materials. That makes it even more striking that a large yellow house in the El Prado neighborhood has large letters spelling out PETRO on top of it, in capital letters.

It is the headquarters of Comunes, the party created by former combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the venue for our meeting with Carlos Orlas, a journalist and member of that party.

Carlos is able to describe what Colombia is going through with all the proper grammar and punctuation and agility of a disciplined journalist who is also a peace activist. The deaths, disappearances, the false positives and the persecution of former combatant men and women warrant serious attention. But when he is asked what Francia Márquez means to him, the solemn mood is broken and his face cannot hide the hope that the future vice-president inspires in him.


Carlos Orlas, journalist and member of the Comunes party in Medellín. Photo: Alina Duarte

“Francia represents the land, the land that has suffered so much but has still blossomed; the land that resists. It is not that she talks about a life project around defending life, the rivers, the mountains, and that she shows this with her actions. It is not just a policy formulated around saying this. Rather this is what she has done, and that is very compelling. Francia is the people. She is an elder woman and we must value this because that is really new here. We have always been governed by the elites from Bogotá, with some interludes for the elites of Antioquia. But a woman who comes from such strong roots in El Cauca—where Colombia’s mightiest rivers spring in the Colombian Massif—is key. That woman is pure love.”

Not only is Francia synonymous with love among her supporters, so is her slogan “vivir sabroso” (living the good life). This simple phrase shook up the Colombian elites at the same time that it spurred empathy and unity among those historically excluded.

“For our people, Vivir Sabroso means living in community, living in a collective construction of seeing ourselves as an extended family. It means living with nature and acknowledging that we are part of it and live in harmony with it if we as a people establish rules for our relationship with nature. Vivir Sabroso means the end of war in this country. It means to live without fear, that we women can go down to the corner without fear of being raped or killed. That young people will not have their eyes shot out because they are demanding education in this country.

To live without fear is to live with rights, to live in peace, to live with joy; to be able to express oneself through art, culture, and sports. It is to be able to enjoy the rich biodiversity we have in this country. That is what Vivir Sabroso means. And we have enjoyed this in the Pacific coast region of Colombia when we play the marimba, when we go and drink “bichi” and begin to talk about ourselves.”


The “nobodies” participating in the presidential campaign to support Petro and Márquez. Photo: Alina Duarte.

Francia has made it clear. Hers is a collective struggle and is summarized by her phrase, “I am because we are.” It is also the constant cry of a Black woman fighting with other women for a world of equals.

Clearly, in the coming years it will not suffice to want to vivir sabroso, or simply insist that “I am because we are.” The battle lines are drawn. Márquez will go from being opposition to serving in government, with the great challenge this implies. The challenge is to take the struggle that she has been waging for at least two decades, a collective struggle, beyond the polls and beyond narratives.

“Colombia will turn into Venezuela”: the battle over narratives

“Our approach was to defend peace, but Uribe’s people came back into power. How did that happen? Through fear, with rhetoric about Venezuela. The only way they could achieve that popular majority was based on a lie and not a proposal. During Uribe’s first and second terms, the mantra was destruction of the FARC, which somehow appealed to a society that felt threatened. But in 2018 they proposed nothing. They simply got people to think that if I won, Colombia would turn into Venezuela. That was all.”

Gustavo Petro, Una vida muchas vidas.

The specter of “turning into Venezuela,” present in political debates over the past two decades throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, had to be present in Colombia, specifically regarding candidate Gustavo Petro.

Media claims that Petro was and is synonymous with Venezuela did not start in 2022. The media battle over “Venezuelanization”—as Petro himself said in his book Una vida muchas vidas—started years earlier. He specifically pinpoints the 2018 presidential campaign, after the media had worn out, but did not desist from, other narratives such as his alleged relationship with the FARC.

One of the main people in charge of attacking the incoming president was former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, one of the most recalcitrant opponents of Gustavo Petro.

Months prior to the election, with several media outlets present, Uribe said that with Gustavo Petro “Colombia could have the worst neo-communism in the region because Mr. Petro is much smarter than [Hugo] Chávez, Mr. Petro is much smarter than [Pedro] Castillo, than President [Alberto] Fernández of Argentina, and Mr. Petro is much smarter than Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua. That is why I have stated very thoughtfully that Chávez was not the teacher; it was Petro who taught Chávez. Colombia could have the most dangerous communism in the region because it has the smartest neo-communist leader, who is Mr. Petro.”

However, despite the barrage of corporate media reports asserting that the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Gustavo Petro had close ties, the only record of an encounter between the two occurred in 1994.


Gustavo Petro and Hugo Chávez, 1994. Photo: social media

After his incarceration following a failed coup attempt in 1992, Hugo Chávez was released in 1994 and attended an event on Bolivarian thought at the Simón Rodríguez Cultural Foundation in Bogotá.

But such evidence is not enough to discredit the campaign about the “Venezuelanization” that Gustavo Petro would purportedly usher in.

Days before the runoff election, the cover of Semana, one of Colombia’s largest circulating magazines, showed the faces of the now defeated Rodolfo Hernández and Gustavo Petro, with a headline that took up 1/3 of the space: “Former Guerilla or Engineer?”

That was not all. Days before the first round of voting, opinion columns in that magazine alleged the same thing. One of them, signed by Semana columnist Maria Andrea Nieto ran the headline, “Colombia is not Venezuela!” It sought to convince readers that despite Colombia’s systematic violence which in 2022 alone, as of May 29, had seen 108 human rights defenders assassinated, 53 massacres and 28 assassinations of signers of the failed peace accords, Colombia was more democratic than Venezuela, no buts about it.

However, Venezuela is still one of the cards played in such “arguments.”’

Before the election was even held, in another issue of the same publication, Salud Hernández Mora published a piece under the headline, “Will Petro Accept another Defeat?” According to this author, the Pacto Histórico is the only one capable of “setting the streets on fire and stomping on democracy.”


Opinion column in Semana magazine before the first round of voting in May of 2022.

Even with most of the headlines in the corporate media against it, the Pacto Histórico showed that a break with the past is possible. In a country with just over 39 million registered voters, 11,291,986 voted for the Pacto Histórico.

The “Venezuelanization” narrative, scandalous magazine covers, and scurrilous headlines were all unable to stem the tide of popular indignation.

Colombia is, and will again be, part of Latin America and the Caribbean.

“The United States seems destined by providence
to plague the Americas with suffering in the name of freedom.”

Simón Bolívar

It is not surprising and is even understandable that Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez have refrained from showing any sympathy toward the so-called progressive governments of Latin America and the Caribbean, given the extensive, over-the-top media campaign being waged against them by the right and far-right of not only Colombia, but the world. However, and contrary to the expectations of the regional left itself, a few weeks have sufficed to see which way the winds are blowing in Colombia’s foreign policy.

If we start from the premise that Colombia’s relationship of economic, political, and military dependence on the United States will far from end during the Pacto Histórico’s term, we understand why one of the first foreign delegations to establish a dialogue with the incoming government was the Biden administration.


Jonathan Finer, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor, meeting with Petro. Petro’s Facebook page.

Colombia, the main U.S. military ally in the region, hosts seven U.S. military bases in its territory. And economically, it is undeniable that Colombia’s leading trade partner is the United States.

Jonathan Finer, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor, headed the delegation that met with the president-elect to ensure that they covered “the full range of issues in the bilateral relationship … including combating climate change, economic development, migration, security, counter narcotics, and many, many other issues. We hope to work closely with the president-elect and his team, including the vice-president elect.”

Petro described the meeting in positive terms as “interest in building around common work, among equal partners, trying to lay the groundwork that allows us to more effectively resolve issues, circumstances, and situations that weigh on the Americas.”

The new government’s relationship with Venezuela

While, for the time being, joint statements with the U.S. government do not mark a 180-degree turn, there are some actions which specifically have marked a change in the government-elect’s foreign policy: its relationship with Venezuela.

After two decades of open hostility towards Colombia’s neighbor, a new stage seems to be opening in bilateral relations. The incoming administration announced its willingness to re-establish relations between the two countries, exchange ambassadors, and thereby reopen the borders which were closed as part of the regional siege against the government of Nicolás Maduro.


Venezuelan Foreign Minister Carlos Faria with Colombia’s Foreign-Minister designate, Álvaro Leyva, July 28 on the Colombia-Venezuela border in Táchira. Photo: Carlos Faria on Twitter.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Carlos Faria met this past July 28th with the Foreign Minister proposed by the government-elect of Colombia, Álvaro Leyva. Faria expressed “a willingness to gradually move toward normalization of relations between our two countries, resuming our historical ties of friendship, cooperation, and complementarity.”

Venezuela may be the most significant change in Colombia’s new foreign policy, but it is not the only one.

As a sort of foreign minister of the Colombian left, Francia Márquez has sought to establish ties with governments and leaders of the Latin American left and with social movements and organizations in the region.

In a tour of South America, Márquez outlined the ideological sympathies of the incoming administration.

Her first stop was Brazil. To the great joy of both, leader Francia did not hold back from yelling “Viva Lula” in a moment which could only be interpreted as support for the campaign of the former Brazilian president in the upcoming October 2 vote. All indications are that Lula will be returned to office.


Lula and Francia Márquez this past July 26th. Photo: Francia Márquez on Twitter

Francia also took advantage of her stop in Río de Janeiro to establish ties with the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra (Landless Workers Movement-MST), with activists, and with the Afro-Brazilian community—specifically with Black women running for the legislature in that South American country.

Further south, she was received by former Argentinian president and current Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirschner, as well as the current President of Argentina, Alberto Fernández. Francia Márquez did not hesitate to approach the local social movements in an encounter that gave a glimpse of some of the priorities on her agenda, such as the legalization of drugs.

Before a packed auditorium that also included Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Nora Cortiñas, a Mother of the Plaza de Mayo, Márquez stated:

“May Colombia lead a debate in the region about a path towards legalization of drugs. I understand that the approach of criminalizing them has had negative impacts, especially on the rights of impoverished and racialized populations, women, young people, and ethnic peoples. These are the ones who have been disproportionately impacted by such policies.”

After Argentina, Márquez headed to Chile, where she was received by President Gabriel Boric. The support offered by the Chilean president was noteworthy. The vice-president-elect welcomed the fact that Boric “has not only expressed his willingness to accompany us in the task of attaining peace, but has offered his home, Chile, to be a venue for peace talks between the Colombian State and the National Liberation Army (ELN).”

And if Márquez’ South American tour sought to strengthen ties with progressive movements, governments, and prominent figures, Bolivia could not be left out.

During his meeting with Francia, President Luis Arce Catacora said that “southern winds are blowing more strongly and strengthening the Patria Grande (Great Homeland).” And former President Evo Morales said that they shared “experiences from the long struggle for the rights of the people most impoverished and excluded by neoliberal policies.”


[Screenshots of tweets by Francia Márquez: “I was happy to meet with @evoespueblo, teacher of life. From him we learned about the dignity of our people, to stand firm despite adversity. Today the struggle of the Bolivian and Colombian people is united to acknowledge that in our differences is a united and sovereign Latin America,” and by Evo Morales: “The beautiful words of Francia Márquez M pay homage to the Bolivian people. We are pleased because now, together with brother @gustavopetro, Colombia is advancing towards unity in diversity, redeeming the plurinationality of Latin America.”]

Bolivia was no exception in terms of Francia’s outreach to social movements. Surrounded by women, workers, peasants, indigenous people, community feminism activists, Márquez was welcomed with open arms.


Head of Government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, with Francia Márquez, Zoom conference.
And although Mexico was not on Francia Márquez’ Latin American tour, the support of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is undeniable. Just a few hours after the electoral victory he congratulated the government-elect and took a lot of time during his morning press conference on June 20th to say that he had spoken to Gustavo Petro on the phone and that his victory was historic.

A less visible meeting that also happened was a zoom call between the vice-president-elect and the Head of Government of Mexico City, Claudia Sheinbaum, on July 7th. Sheinbaum described Márquez as a “symbol of struggle, inclusion, love, and hope for all of Latin America, especially women.”

In the few short weeks of the transition period while an administration was put together, the foreign policy priorities of the new Colombian government have become crystal clear. Petro and Márquez will seek to be part of the Latin America that has often been denied to Colombia because of U.S. influence.


The author of this analysis, Alina Duarte, with Francia Márquez.

The Pacto Histórico will also be among the peoples of the region.

The coin toss

The Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez administration faces the coming challenge of a country profoundly marked by the unraveling of the social fabric, and by a political, ideological, and electoral right wing that will have a hard time separating itself from the paramilitaries, drug traffickers, and the interests of U.S. imperialism.

The Pacto Histórico government will have an historic duty to open new paths in a country that is still seeking peace, but has not yet found it.

Between the date when the Cartagena de Indias Peace Accords were signed, September 26, 2016, and July 29, 2022, 1,335 leaders and human rights defenders were murdered. 319 massacres were committed and at least 334 signers of the peace accords were assassinated, while unofficial estimates speak of more than 600.

That is where the light of the Pacto Histórico—The Nobodies—shines.

They have alliances, conscience, and bravery on their side. They have allied governments that have spared no efforts in establishing networks to help bring Colombia and the Patria Grande out of the long, dark night of neoliberalism.

The Nobodies want to be in government and they will be. But they want and can be more than that.


Mural on the streets of Cali. Photo: Alina Duarte

Alina Duarte is a journalist and Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, COHA.

This analysis was edited by COHA Director, Patricio Zamorano.

This article was translated from the original Spanish by Jill Clark-Gollub, COHA Assistant Editor/Translator.

[Main photo: Gustavo Petro’s Facebook page]

[1] Translated by Cedric Belfrage with some edits by COHA.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... -analysis/

The US War on Drugs Isn’t What it Seems – and Colombia’s New President Wants to End it
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on AUGUST 14, 2022
Bradley Blankenship


Gustavo Petro promises a major blow to US hegemony over Latin America

Leftist Gustavo Petro was inaugurated as Colombia’s new president on August 7, ushering in what will likely be an unprecedented political swing for what is a perennially right-wing government. In his first address, Petro mentioned many important issues that face Colombia including climate change, poverty, education and, notably, the so-called ‘War on Drugs.’

“It’s time for a new international convention that accepts that the War on Drugs has resoundingly failed and that it has left one million Latin Americans murdered, most of them Colombians, during the last 40 years, and that kills 70,000 people in North America from overdoses annually with drugs, none of which are produced in Latin America,” he said.

Petro added that this war “has strengthened the mafias and weakened states,” while leading “states to commit crimes,” including the Colombian state. He called for a new paradigm that “allows life and doesn’t generate death” while also putting blame on the United States for having the ability to change global anti-drug policy but failing to do so.

This is a truly game-changing declaration from Petro because Colombia is far and away the most important partner in the US-led War on Drugs. Colombia rejecting the existing status quo would send a shockwave through the international community and could set up multilateral discussions on a new strategy that does not focus on a military-first response.

To note, Petro knows a thing or two about the War on Drugs given his previous connection to the now-defunct left-wing paramilitary group, M-19. This war has been noted for its deep contradictions, namely the fact that US military aid and training to Colombia has focused more on anti-communism – that is, putting down groups like M-19 – than on combating the drug trade.

The US has sent military aid to groups in Colombia, including the Colombian military, that have committed well-documented human rights abuses. The Clinton administration even waived most of the human-rights conditions normally attached to such aid, deeming it crucial to US national security. Washington also hyper-focuses attention on combating left-wing groups in Colombia while supporting right-wing groups, e.g., those that support US capital, even if they have connections to the drug trade.

As a notable example, former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, who received the US’ highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from former US President George Bush, was identified by US intelligence as tied to the country’s drug trade. He remains a powerful player in Colombian politics and was Washington’s main conduit in the region during his tenure from 2002-2010.

On top of these contradictions that are associated with Cold War politics, Petro also correctly noted the internal contradictions of the US-led War on Drugs. The domestic policy of prohibition is not working and people are dying left and right. US life expectancy is declining due in no small part to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic; however, endemic poverty and drugs are contributing the most to the total lost life years.

This is a point of particular importance for me personally, as I have noted in my column for RT at various points. Having been born in Cincinnati, Ohio and growing up in Northern Kentucky, essentially the epicenter of the US opiate crisis, I have seen the devastating effects of these drugs first-hand. I know families that have been ripped apart, I’ve seen the destitution of addiction and even lost around a dozen of my peers to overdoses, suicide or gang-related murder.

One thing I can say for sure is that the status quo isn’t working. If anything, it simply creates a feedback loop where recidivism and relapse are inevitable – all while private rehabilitation facilities and large pharmaceutical companies profit on the back end. The inevitable outcome, as is ever the case in the United States, is the criminalization of poverty – because low household income is perhaps the most important indicator of substance abuse.

This is a particularly important point because it shows the intersection of contradictions with the War on Drugs domestically and internationally. Namely, the war is an extension of the backward, neoliberal Washington regime and its quest to crush all social movements – whether those at home or abroad – that challenge the American dictatorship of the wealthy.

This empire has revealed itself to not only be morally unjust to those most affected by its proclivity to commit unspeakable crimes but also unreliable, irresponsible and unstable. As US imperialism continues its inevitable downward trajectory, windows of opportunities will present themselves to change existing policies that do not fit the interests of the international community. President Gustavo Petro’s call for a new international anti-drug paradigm is one such example.



https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/08/ ... to-end-it/

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Colombia’s President Petro: Guaidó’s Presidency is Non-Existent
ORINOCOTRIBUNE AUGUST 16, 2022


Former deputy Juan Guaidó in a defeated posture. Photo: Reuters/Manaure Quintero.

On Sunday, August 14, during a conversation with a journalist from the Colombian news outlet Semana, the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, said that it is time for the normalization of relations with Venezuela to be reflected in binational trade and production.

“There is already a normal flow, now we have to expand that to the issue of trade, to the issue of production,” said the Colombian president in relation to progress in resuming diplomatic relations with Venezuela.

On Thursday, August 11, Caracas and Bogotá appointed ambassadors to consolidate the reestablishment of diplomatic ties, fractured during the outgoing administration of Iván Duque, who decided to ignore the Constitutional president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and ally himself with the self-proclaimed Juan Guaidó, following Washington’s strategy to oust the legitimate Venezuelan president.

President Petro was asked about Colombia’s support for Guaidó as head of state. Petro responded by recalling Plato’s allegory of the caves. As in the Platonic tale, he said, the reality of Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela is made of pure shadows, it is non-existent.

The president of Colombia added that the former Popular Will deputy “has no control of anything in Venezuela.”

CAVECOL expects to formalize procedures

The president of the Chamber of Venezuelan–Colombian Economic Integration (CAVECOL), Luis Alberto Russián, stated that the chamber has positive expectations about the resumption of commercial relationship between both nations.

In addition, Russián pointed out that CAVECOL is confident that the policies and measures to govern the economic sphere can be maintained in the medium and long term.

In the same way, he expressed his belief that if the commercial relationship is established through binational agreements, the need to demand customs imports duties can begin to be evaluated, including compliance with sanitary requirements and permits, and trade can continue with the supervision and controls that are required.

In recent days, many businesses in Venezuela have raised concerns about an abrupt trade opening, as this may jeopardize their operations in certain areas. These sectors, such as the plastic bags sector, have been requesting special protection from the Venezuelan government via import duties, in order to allow them to be more competitive with Colombian producers.

https://orinocotribune.com/colombias-pr ... -existent/

[blindpig]

President of Colombia calls for a truce from armed groups to face rains


Petro asked mayors and governors from all over the nation to take extreme measures to face the rainy season. | Photo: @petrogustavo
Published 19 August 2022

The president urged all the Armed Forces to be ready to provide assistance to those Colombian families that are affected by the rains.

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, made a call this Thursday to the armed structures that operate in the country to lay down their arms and establish a truce to face the winter rainy season.

According to predictions from the nation's meteorological authorities, the coming wave of rains is estimated to be stronger than the one that left nearly three million Colombians affected in 2010.

Therefore, the president urged the Armed Forces and the battalions to be ready to help Colombian families, mainly in those regions lacking infrastructure and resources, such as those on the Pacific coast and the Amazon.


During a visit to the Villavicencio region, the head of state, faced with the seriousness of the winter wave that is approaching, expressed that "in the midst of this situation, it would be painful if the exchange of shots hindered the rescue efforts in the different regions of Colombia. ”.

To which he added that he will try, as part of his human security policy, for the military forces and the peasant communities to reestablish their relations; especially in terms of prevention, warning and reconstruction in those territories that are the most affected.

By the way, from the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (Ideam) of Colombia they predicted that the heavy rains in the three winter months could affect at least 40 percent of the country's land area.

Therefore, in the same way, the Executive requested the mayors and Governors of the country to reinforce the measures that contribute to reducing the impacts of rainfall that could extend from October to December.

Regarding the possibility of resuming the Peace Agreements signed in 2016, and establishing a dialogue table with the military factions still active, the member of the José Alvear Restrepo Jurists collective, Eduardo Carreño avoided that these conversations should be formalized.

The impact of these intense rains, which are associated with the La Niña phenomenon, could exacerbate the humanitarian crisis situation in the Pacific region, a situation that, if all institutions do not act accurately, could be replicated in several other departments. Colombians.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/presiden ... -0005.html

President Gustavo Petro announces police reform in Colombia


Witnesses to the criminal act indicated that Carlos Rincón died immediately due to the seriousness of his injuries. | Photo: @Cuartoscuro
Published August 20, 2022 (6 hours 27 minutes ago)

It is presumed that members of the criminal group Clan del Golfo were implicated behind the murder of Carlos Eduardo Rincón Silva.

The Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Indepaz) denounced on Friday the murder of the social leader, Carlos Eduardo Rincón Silva, in a municipality in the Colombian department of Santander.

According to the authorities of the municipality of Puerto Wilches, the crime against Rincón Silva was recorded around noon, when the social leader was intercepted by unknown individuals, who shot him repeatedly.

Witnesses to the criminal act indicated that Carlos Rincón died immediately due to the seriousness of his injuries.

As it became known, members of the Clan del Golfo criminal group would be implicated behind the murder of the social leader, since on August 10 they would have disseminated a pamphlet, in which they declared a group of people from this municipality a "military objective." from Santander, among them Carlos Rincón.


The pamphlet contained the names and nicknames of around 30 people, who presumably must leave the Magdalena Medio region or be killed by members of the Clan del Golfo.

Despite the threats against him, Carlos Eduardo Rincón Silva, the National Protection Unit (UNP) would have withdrawn the security scheme.


Faced with this situation, Rincón Silva filed a legal action for the UNP to restore the security scheme, which ruled in his favor more than a month ago, however to date the unit has not responded to said request.

From Indepaz they point out that at least 117 social leaders have been assassinated in Colombia this year and 1,344 since the signing of the peace agreement.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia ... -0005.html

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Top Biden official: ‘U.S. would overthrow Colombia’s new left-wing president 40 years ago’
By Ben Norton (Posted Aug 19, 2022)

Originally published: Multipolarista on August 17, 2022 (more by Multipolarista)

The top Latin America advisor for U.S. President Joe Biden, Juan Sebastián González, threateningly said of Colombia’s new left-wing president:

40 years ago, the United States would have done everything possible to prevent the election of Gustavo Petro, and once in power it would have done almost everything possible to sabotage his government.

González is the Western hemisphere director for the U.S. National Security Council (NSC). He previously worked in the State Department and NSC in the Barack Obama administration.

González made these incendiary comments in Spanish in an interview with the Colombian media.

Obliquely acknowledging the long history of U.S. meddling in Latin America’s sovereign internal affairs, González added,

Those are the policies of the Cold War, that to a certain point today for some people are a justification from revisionist perspectives that characterize the policy of the United States in the context of a local manifestation of an empire.


Petro is Colombia’s first ever left-wing president. He is a former revolutionary with socialist armed movement M-19, which signed a peace treaty and demilitarized. Petro subsequently established himself as a lawmaker and became mayor of the capital Bogotá.

Although he ran a center-left campaign harshly condemning the socialist governments in Venezuela and Nicaragua, Petro has tempered his criticism since entering office.


In the first vote by Petro’s administration at the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) on August 12, Colombia refused to join in the politically motivated condemnation of Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government. Colombia was absent from the vote, alongside the governments of Mexico, Bolivia, Honduras, and El Salvador, which abstained.

Petro has also rapidly pursued the normalization of relations between Colombia and its neighbor Venezuela.

Just a few days after winning the election in June, then President-elect Petro held a phone call with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, discussing plans to reopen the border and establish peace.

The president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, announced on August 16 that the parliamentary body was coordinating with Colombia’s Senate in order to re-establish formal commercial and diplomatic relations.

Petro was inaugurated on August 7. The ceremony was full of important political symbolism. Petro requested that the sword of anti-colonialist leader Simón Bolívar be present.


At the inauguration, Petro was also given the presidential sash by María José Pizarro, a lawmaker from Petro’s left-wing Pacto Histórico party and the daughter of Carlos Pizarro.

Carlos Pizarro was the leader of the revolutionary socialist 19th of April Movement (M-19) that Petro had been involved in in his youth.

The M-19 demilitarized in 1990 after signing a peace agreement with the Colombian government. Having put down its weapons, M-19 became a legal political party, and Carlos Pizarro was its presidential candidate.

But just a few weeks after signing the peace deal, the Colombian state murdered Carlos Pizarro, in an operation organized by the feared Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), a notorious intelligence agency that acted as a kind of secret police.

https://mronline.org/2022/08/19/top-bid ... years-ago/

Still might....Petro ran center-left but since election has made some significant gestures that might indicate a more 'left' path. Of course talk is cheap, let's see what the action is.

And of course the US can just keep hush and let the right wing oligarch, militias and corporations 'do their thing', hands clean....

Good luck and hire some Wagner bodyguards.

[blindpig]

Colombian government launches initiative for protection of social leaders
Interior Minister Alfonso Prada reported that the protection plan will cover the 65 municipalities hardest hit by violence in the country

August 23, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch


On August 20, the government of President Gustavo Petro in Colombia launched the first Unified Command Post for Life (PMU), in the municipality of Caldono, in the Cauca department. (Photo: Alfonso Prada/Twitter)

On August 20, the newly inaugurated left-wing government of President Gustavo Petro and Vice President Francia Márquez in Colombia launched the first Unified Command Post for Life (PMU) in the municipality of Caldono, in the Cauca department. The PMU is an initiative that aims to achieve total peace and protect the population affected by violence across the country, especially social leaders, human rights activists, environmentalists and former combatants of the demobilized FARC guerilla group.

The launch was led by Interior Minister Alfonso Prada, Environment Minister Susana Muhamad, Labor Minister Gloria Inés Ramírez, and around 30 legislators from across the political spectrum, including the president of the Senate, Roy Barreras, and the president of the Peace Commission of the Senate, Iván Cepeda.


“We have installed the PMU, which is a command post to achieve rapid security in preventative approach, not in the approach of sadness when we receive the news of the death of social leaders,” said Interior Minister Prada.

Prada explained that the protection plan will cover the 65 municipalities hardest hit by violence in the country, adding that initial emphasis will be placed on “5 to 10 of them, which are in a very delicate situation and are systematically assassinating their leaders.” He said that the state would provide accompaniment and maintain a permanent presence in those 10 municipalities.

The Interior Minister said that the government is particularly committed to the Cauca department. “For us, Cauca is a huge priority…If we achieve integral and total peace in Cauca, I have no doubt that we can dream of having total peace in Colombia,” said Prada.

Prada explained that instructions had been given to the institutions that have powers related to the protection of the lives of social leaders, land defenders, environmentalists, community leaders, peace signatories, land restitution managers, and those who work in crop substitution.

Prada added that the government had already ordered the local authorities to comply with the early warnings issued by the Ombudsman’s Office, especially for the municipalities of Caldono, Buenos Aires and Santander de Quilichao, in Cauca. He also said that the government would strengthen the National Protection Unit (UNP).

For her part, Environment Minister Muhamad stressed that this plan recognizes land defenders as people who make a positive, important and legitimate contribution to the protection of nature and promotion of a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Muhamad assured that with the beginning of the plan, the implementation of the Escazú Agreement also begins, pending its ratification by the House of Representatives.

With regard to illegal paramilitary groups, Senator Barreras said that dialogues are the only way that allows peace. “The government and the congress have every desire to allow them to reintegrate into society and these command posts for life are spaces for dialogue and listening, the message that we are sending them is that they take advantage of the opportunity to lay down their arms so that they can join the life of Colombia,” said Barreras.


On August 19, the Ombudsman’s Office released a report in which it reported that between January 1 and July 31, 2022, 122 social leaders and human rights defenders had been assassinated in different departments of the country. It also reported that Cauca with 19 assassinations, Nariño with 17, Antioquia with 12, and Putumayo with 11, are the departments with the highest number of cases.

According to the Colombian human rights organization Institute of Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), between January 1 and August 20, 2022, 119 environmentalists, land defenders, human rights defenders, Afro-descendent, Indigenous, peasant and social leaders had been killed by illegal armed and drug-trafficking groups operating in the country. Additionally, during this period, 32 ex-combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who were in the reincorporation process, had also been murdered.

Petro and Márquez, during their election campaign, vowed to fight drug trafficking and paramilitarism, and consolidate peace in the country. The day following their inauguration, on August 8, in the first press conference to local media, Petro confirmed the resumption of negotiations with the National Liberation Army (ELN), the largest leftist guerrilla group active in Colombia. On August 11, a delegation of the Colombian government, headed by Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva Durán, visited Cuba to establish contact with the leadership of the ELN in order to advance towards peace negotiations. On August 20, President Petro announced that in order to further advance in the dialogue with the ELN, the arrest and extradition orders against the members of the insurgency group were suspended. At the same time, he confirmed the restitution of the negotiation protocols with the ELN that had been signed with the government of former president Juan Manuel Santos.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/08/23/ ... l-leaders/

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President of Colombia summons unions and businessmen to agree on labor reform


The Government of Petro, who began his administration on August 7, is focused on the approval in Congress of the tax reform, | Photo: EFE
Published 24 August 2022

Petro added that, in addition to the labor reform, the objective is to create "a labor statute that dignifies the working people."

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, announced on Tuesday that he had summoned employers and workers' unions to agree, together with the Ministry of Labor, on a labor reform.

"We have called on business associations and workers' unions to agree with the Ministry of Labor on a labor reform," the president of the South American country wrote on his Twitter account.

Petro added that, in addition to the labor reform, the objective is to create "a labor statute that dignifies the working people."

"The fruit of this agreement will be presented as a bill," explained the head of state.


The president, who this Tuesday received members of the National Trade Council, at the Casa de Nariño, headquarters of the Executive power, told journalists that the decision was made that the agreement process on labor matters extend until December or January 2023 .

The reform aims to "improve the working environment," said Petro, who seeks improvements for workers such as payment of night hours, equal pay between men and women, ending service provision contracts and achieving greater stability. in the jobs.

The Government of Petro, who began his presidential administration on August 7, is focused on the approval in Congress of the tax reform, whose main objective is the reduction of social inequality.

It seeks to protect the productive company “and that, by protecting production, equality and equity are generated; and finance the state, because that's what reforms are for," he added.

The Colombian authorities have the objective of collecting, if the tax reform is approved, 25 billion pesos (equivalent to 5,736 million dollars) annually, in order to reduce the social debt.

If the fight against tax avoidance and evasion is added, the Government would receive a total of 50 billion pesos per year (around 11,472 million dollars).

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia ... -0004.html

Good luck with that....The Colombian bourgeoisie, their thugs(including the Army and security services), with US support, have been killing labor activists for 40+ years... Leaving aside the fact that 'reforms' are never what they're cracked up to be and only postpone the class issue I would not bet on Petro's longevity.

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Petro commissions Intelligence to combat corruption in Colombia


Petro assured that with the change of objectives of the DNI, the aim is to safeguard the country from the corrupt and to enforce respect for citizen rights. | Photo: Presidency of Colombia
Published 25 August 2022

Colombian President stresses that the DNI will safeguard sovereignty and protect the rights and freedoms of citizens.

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, expressed this Wednesday that, from now on, the main objective of the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI) will be to persecute corruption and the corrupt, and not the opposition, as was done in other governments.

During the inauguration of the Director of National Intelligence, Manuel Alberto Casanova, the Head of State stressed that State intelligence will have as its main task "to safeguard sovereignty, from the dangers that the rights and freedoms of citizens and Today, I want to say it publicly, the objective of intelligence, of the State's intelligence community, is to pursue corruption”.

He asserted that this modification seeks to guarantee "respect, therefore, for the opposition, for the free press, for justice and for citizens in their rights in general."


He reflected that the DNI inherited by his Government, that of Change, "is the same sheath as the DAS (Administrative Department of Security), it is an invention that must always be examined."

He considered that “both in the DAS form and in the DNI form, and more other State apparatuses, were directed (...) to persecute the political opposition, the free press, justice and we have to make a break because to that is not the intelligence of the State”.

During the day, the inauguration of the National Director of Protection (UNP), Augusto Rodríguez, also took place. In this regard, Petro stressed that "the opposition must be guaranteed the maximum possible security and, undoubtedly, the social leaders scattered throughout the national geography in remote, difficult places must have a protective presence of the State."

He stressed that said agency must "protect citizens, social leaders, threatened political leaders," and insisted on protecting those who really need it.

He valued the importance of having adequate resources for this activity, but above all with promoting a peace process "as the greatest insurer of social leaders in Colombia."

He stated: “I learned that when a revolver is pointed at one, the problem is that they do not pull the trigger (…) And many times, those who pull the trigger can be paralyzed by politics, by political action, by social action.”

According to the media, the DAS was suppressed in October 2011, during the Government of Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018). Years before, his program of illegal wiretapping of telephone calls, launched during the administration of former President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), caused a scandal.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/petro-en ... -0009.html

Aren't these agencies like branch offices of the CIA? Does Petro have a martyrdom complex or does he have a 'cunning plan'? Whatever, I cannot see Columbia doing a '360' with the establishment's security apparatus extant, a leap of faith I'm incapable of.

[blindpig]

Government of Colombia Denounces Attack on Presidential Staff Convoy
AUGUST 26, 2022


Evidence of gunshots on an SUV in Petro's staff motorcade. Photo: Colombian Army.

On Wednesday August 24, the Colombian government, denounced the attack perpetrated against a convoy of presidential vehicles traveling to Norte de Santander to prepare for the visit of President Gustavo Petro.

Petro has been touring various regions of the country. His security team, made up of agents from the National Protection Unit (UNP), recently traveled to Norte de Santander.

The attack occurred on the road leading from Bucaramanga to the municipality of El Tarra, a region near the Colombia-Venezuela border, where three vehicles carrying government agents encountered an illegal roadblock set up by six armed men. Upon the vehicles’ refusal to stop at the checkpoint, the men attacked the convoy with firearms.

“One of the vehicles failed to pass the checkpoint and another was punctured. Two vehicles and a driver from the UNP were detained there for a period of time, then later released,” reported a statement from the Colombian Presidential Office.

The statement added that the other cars that in the caravan managed to pass the checkpoint, and that all agents are currently under the protection of government authorities.


After the incident, the UNP, the Ministry of Defense, and other agencies launched investigations to clarify the events.

The Colombian government reported that no one was injured in the attack, and in response to the incident, officials from the army’s Second Division went to the location in San Pablo where the events had occurred.

President Gustavo Petro also spoke about what happened on his Twitter account, where he stated that this type of violence “needs to end.” A variety of irregular armed groups dedicated to cocaine production operate in the surrounding region, and Petro has been negotiating peace agreements with them.


“Although only property was damaged and the people were uninjured, the government will continue to be committed to maintaining peace,” stressed the president.


(RedRadioVE) by Ana Perdigón with Orinoco Tribune content

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

https://orinocotribune.com/government-o ... ff-convoy/

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Former paramilitary chief apologizes to victims of the conflict in Colombia


From a prison in Atlanta, United States (USA), the former paramilitary addressed the attendees via streaming. | Photo: EFE
Published August 26, 2022 (10 hours 8 minutes ago)

The former paramilitary chief and two former commanders of the former AUC publicly requested forgiveness before 400 victims of violent acts.

During an act of recognition of the crimes committed against the civilian population, the former paramilitary chief of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), Salvatore Mancuso, publicly apologized to the victims and assumed responsibility for numerous violent acts.

The Unit for Comprehensive Care and Reparation for Victims indicated that some 400 people were present at the event held at the Sugar Baby Rojas Combat Coliseum, in Barranquilla, capital of the Colombian department of Atlántico.

From a prison in Atlanta, United States (USA), the former paramilitary addressed the attendees via streaming to ask for forgiveness for the criminal acts committed.


“All this that happened fills me with regret, shame, anguish, pain, suffering, I would like to turn back time so that these situations would never have arisen. I am responsible for this tragedy, ”he acknowledged.

Also, Mancuso confessed that every day he thinks about the people he hurt. “All my life and a thousand times sorry, every day. You guys are in my daily pushups and daily prayers. There is no court order that can order a person to genuinely assume these responsibilities and ask for forgiveness”, he stressed.


During the ceremony, the former AUC commanders, Edgar Ignacio Fierro Flórez and José Gregorio Mangones Lugo, who are guilty of various crimes, also publicly apologized.

The act of public request for forgiveness on this day corresponds to a prioritized sentence issued in 2014 by the Justice and Peace Chamber of the Superior Court of Bogotá, which found the AUC guilty of 13,000 homicides, gender-based violence, forced disappearances and displacements.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia ... -0029.html

Google Translator

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President Petro affirms that the Army must prepare for peace


Gustavo Petro declared that it is urgent to forge an alliance between the soldier and the peasantry to advance in the construction of the country. | Photo: @alfonsoprada
Published 21 August 2022

Gustavo Petro stressed that the greatest challenge during his mandate will be to build the pillars for the return of definitive peace in his country.

During the presentation and recognition ceremony for the troops and the new Colombian military leadership, President Gustavo Petro said on Saturday that the country's troops must prepare to be an army of peace.

In the act, the Colombian president set the new course for the Armed Forces during his Government and warned the military high command and soldiers that they must change the concept of war given their decision to dialogue with the National Liberation Army (ELN).

"It is about changing the conception itself (...) what is demanded by the Colombian people (...) is an army that begins to prepare for peace, that ends, hopefully if we succeed, as an army of peace," Petro declared in the presence of the new leadership of the Armed Forces.


The Colombian president stressed that the greatest challenge during his mandate will be to build the pillars for the return of definitive peace in his country.

Gustavo Petro declared that it is urgent to forge an alliance between the soldier and the peasantry to advance in the construction of the country, after decades of conflict and struggle.

“What achieves peace is the union between the Armed Forces and its people, which we have to achieve, because it has been broken in many parts of the country, due to lack of trust. We have to rebuild,” he remarked.


President Gustavo Petro is after ambitious reforms that include ending the internal conflict through different negotiations with the groups that remained in arms after the 2016 peace agreement.


Prior to the military ceremony, Gustavo Petro suspended the arrest and extradition orders of the ELN negotiators in Cuba to advance in a peace process with this rebel organization, the last recognized in the country.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/presiden ... -0002.html

Google Translator

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Colombia: No Bombing of Illegal Groups When Minors Are Present


The Minister of Defense of Colombia, Iván Velásquez, offers a press conference to announce that the bombings against illegal groups are suspended | Photo: EFE/Mauricio Dueñas Castañeda

The Colombian Minister of Defense, Iván Velásquez, announced Thursday the suspension of bombings by the Armed Forces against illegal groups that put the lives of the civilian population at risk or in which there is knowledge of the presence of minors.

"Minors recruited by illegal organizations are victims. Therefore, any military action cannot endanger the victims; life must be prioritized over death; operations cannot be developed that endanger the lives of the civilian population and these forcibly recruited minors. These actions in this direction must end. The bombings must be suspended", said Velásquez to local media.

The minister added that, before a military operation, the uniformed forces must consider how viable the intervention is through the Armed Forces intelligence service.

During the government of Iván Duque, the attacks generated some casualties against illegal groups. Still, they were criticized because several also involved civilians or children recruited by these structures.

The most recent example was in September 2021, when government forces bombed a camp of the National Liberation Army (ELN), an operation in which four minors were killed.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Col ... -0014.html