Posted by: Paula Delgado-Kling | May 22, 2017

I am happy to share another book excerpt from Pacifica Literary Review.

The following excerpt appeared in Pacifica Literary Review, issue 9 – Winter 2017.

 

preview excerpt

Read the rest of the excerpt here — Pacifica Literary Review.

Posted by: Paula Delgado-Kling | February 13, 2017

Some excerpts of my book!

The kind folks at The Grief Diaries published an excerpt of my book about Colombia.

In February 1983, Colombia’s state security agency, DAS, warned my parents that the spies of an urban guerrilla group, the M-19 or the Movement 19th of April, were trailing our family and studying our routines. Their intention was to kidnap one of us; maybe even me, and I was then eight years old. Three days after DAS informed my parents, our family moved to Canada and I grew up Canadian, a schoolgirl with a green kilt and green tights who walked to school in the snow or biked on warmer days.

In 2001, Colombian intellectuals helped me set up a meeting with Vera Grave, once a top M-19 commander. I prepared our meeting on the pretense that I was a freelance reporter for Maclean’s magazine. Nine years prior, the M-19 had signed a peace accord, and Vera was granted immunity from her role as one of only two women in the group’s leadership.

Read the rest here.

**

And another excerpt was translated into Japanese and published by Happano.org.

 オメロは生き残りの一人だった。1997年2月のある朝、10時間の眠りのあと、彼は目を覚ました。見れば、カンブーチェ(ジャングルの泥地に建てられた、雨水やヘビなどを避けるための高床式の小屋)に並ぶ寝台は、どれも空っぽだった。小屋の中は学校の寮のように、8台の寝台が2列に16台並んでいた。寝台には1枚ずつの毛布。きれいに畳まれたものもあれば、寝起きに床に投げ捨てられたものもあった。さびた屋根の穴からは、朝靄と木漏れ日がしのびこんでいた。

 拉致された夜、ジープに乗せられ、降りて長い距離を歩かされ、母親から引き離された心痛もあって、オメロはぐったりしていた。カンプーチェに着くなり眠り込んだ。家を離れて二日目の夜は、寝汗をかいては震え、少し眠っては目を覚ました。

 カンプーチェの外では、日々の活動がはじまっていた。調理用の火から煙があがるのをオメロは見た。そこに20人ほどの人間がいるのに気づいた。みんな迷彩服を着ていた。自分を誘拐した男、アルフレードがこう言った。「わき道にはチュロスがいる。道はこことつながっている」 男は寒くもないのに両手をすり合わせた。

For my Japanese friends, read the rest here.

Posted by: Paula Delgado-Kling | October 27, 2016

(Again) From archives: Chavez’s 120,000 Armed Civilian Guards

This, again. We must watch this again.

This is a post originally from September 2010. It is worth re-reading now, (again) given the images of vigilante groups abusing civilians which we have seen coming from Venezuela, (again) via Twitter, during the last week.

***

The Spanish reporter David Beriain traveled to Venezuela, and the result is an astounding documentary about the civilian groups that the government of Hugo Chavez is arming for when—and there will be a when because that country is a boiling pot about to blow its lid off—he needs their bodies against the opposition; incidentally, he considers his opposition to include the U.S. (“That yanqui imperialism,” as he likes to say) and Colombia (“Our sister Colombia converted into an instrument of imperialism”).

“Juventud.” “Socialista.” “ … la muerte.” Such are the cries, barely beyond puberty, of the disenchanted who have been enchanted by Chavez. For the flavor of Caracas, add the salsa music in the background.

In “Guardians of Chavez” (which you can watch here or on the videos below) Beriain takes us to a slum called 23 de Enero, named after the 1958 coup d’état which led to the fall of the dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez, who was a U.S. ally. The barrio 23 de Enero gained headlines in September 2008 for erecting the Plaza Manuel Marulanda Velez, in commemoration of the FARC’s founder; its inauguration included burning a flag of the U.S. In the 23 de Enero hood, you will also find murals of Argala, the most important ideologist of ETA, the armed nationalist and separatist organization in Basque, Spain, side-by-side murals of Jesus Christ holding a Kalashnikov rifle and sharing the last supper with Simon Bolivar, Lenin, Che, Fidel Castro and Marulanda. So you get the idea that this is Chavista territory in every sense.

One of the armed civilian groups operating in the 23 de Enero is “La Piedrita,” which, in reality, is a gang comprised of young hard-core Chavez supporters. One of its members expressed, “Let the right know, let the empire (that’s the U.S. to you and me) know, if we have to defend the (Chavez’s socialist) revolution through arms, we will do it.”

Commander Marachi, the leader of Los Carapaicas, another Chavez support group, which in this case is more of an urban guerrilla-type group, armed and in fatigues, with masked faces and gloved hands, said there are training camps outside Caracas where young people are receiving arms’ training to also defend Chavez’s socialist revolution. (Incidentally, the Carapaicas, a group created by Chavez in 1992 before he was president, have denounced Chavez’s inner circle for embezzlement and corruption.)

It is estimated 120,000 Chavez supporters have received military training already. A farmer, seemingly illiterate, seemingly submissive, was asked why he needed a gun in order to drive a tractor, and he responded, “For defense, to safeguard the food supply of the Venezuelan people.” From whom? “From the empire, from an invasion.”

Not surprising: Approximately 2 people are murdered every hour in Venezuela and 44 people are murdered every day. In 2009, there were 16,000 murders, and 50,000 victims of shootings, half of which end up with a lifelong impairment. These victims show up at the hospitals with, on average, five shots perforating their body.

In non-Chavista parts of Caracas, houses are protected by sky-high walls reinforced with barbed wire, drivers do not stop at traffic lights, and drivers, before electronically opening the garage at home, circle the block a few times until the car which seems to tail-gate them disappears.

The Venezuelan president, in his column, “Lineas de Chavez,” wrote of the documentary as “real conflicting and powerful, meant to make the world believe the Bolivarian Government is illegitimate and terrorist.”

It was, in fact, Chavez’s criticism of the documentary that tuned me on to its existence. “Guardians of Chavez” gets an A++.

—–

“Guardians of Chavez”

Posted by: Paula Delgado-Kling | September 26, 2016

What Peace? Where is the Rule of Law?

@ColombiaTalk

11

Colombian artist Doris Salcedo lights thousands of candles in Bogotá’s Plaza de Bolivar as a memorial for those killed by FARC. Doris Salcedo, Acción de Duelo, 2007 / Photograph: nobara hayakawa

I am not an optimist, sadly. I wish this was not the case.

Whatever happens on October 2nd, when Colombians vote on a referendum on the result of an accord between the FARC and the Colombian government, Colombia will not –suddenly– be “at peace.”

Even with this accord, the core of the problem remains — state-building. Peace cannot be achieved without the rule of law, and the authorities of the Colombian government do not have the capacity to penetrate and maintain presence in the most isolated regions of the country. There are an ample number of illegal groups aching to occupy what was traditionally FARC territory in the departments of Putumayo, Chocó, Cauca, Nariño, and beyond.

A headteacher at a school, built by the FARC in the hamlet of Las Damas, Caqueta, told the Guardian: “.. for as long as I can remember, Las Damas has lived outside the state; peace will bring the state to this place for the first time, and for the first time, Las Damas will feel like part of Colombia.” Will it?

In July 2016, my countrymen celebrated the accord with festivities punctuated by fireworks and toasts with aguardiente. Today, the final accord will be signed in Cartagena and I imagine the greater magnitude of this bash. “Peace! Peace!” will be the drunken slurs shouted from the balconies of colonial Cartagena.

But I do not understand my countrymen’s elation with the accord. Colombia continues positioned in the cusp of “failed state.”

Here is why:

1. Drug trafficking.

Coca cultivation rose by 39 percent in 2015 to 96,084 hectares, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, more than double the nadir of 47,788 hectares registered in 2012.

The FARC may disarm, but it will leave a vacuum for other illegal groups to take over the production and distribution of drugs — which middle-ranked members of the FARC are likely to seize on as an opportunity.

2. The FARC Splinter Groups.

In June 2016, in Quebrada del Medio in Cordoba department, a FARC group carried out a census of the local population, and announced that it will continue to demand payments; but in the post-agreement world, the group will cease calling them “extortions,” re-branding them as a “voluntary quota.

In July 2016, a faction of the FARC’s First Front, also known as the “Armando Ríos” Front in the southeastern jungles, said it would refuse to lay down its arms. And more recently, in September 2016, at least 40 members of the FARC’s First Front again declared themselves opposed to the peace process and are attempting to establish a presence in Yaigojé Apaporis national park near the border with Brazil.

Further, academics believe some FARC members will “officially demobilize,” but continue their operations in Venezuela. Many have already moved their properties and families to the Venezuelan side of the border.

3. The neo-paramilitary groups.

Also known as BACRIM (bandas criminales) or “third-paramilitary generation.”

Not so long ago, dozens of middle managers of the demobilized Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia took advantage of the power vacuum to continue committing crimes — drug trafficking, extortion, even human smuggling — resulting from their accumulated experience, according to Eduardo Pizarro, founder and researcher at the Institute of Political Studies and International Relations (IEPRI) of the National University of Colombia and President of the Victims Reparation Commission.

These drug gangs are now present in 339 municipalities where they exercise territorial control, co-opt local authorities, and build up their connections with international organized crime gangs, according to Sergio de Zubiría, from the University of Los Andes. The neo-paramilitary groups are made up of 5,000 to 6,000 members; and their actions lead to 300,000 people displaced annually. Over the years, they have worked side-by-side with FARC.

Human rights groups have warned that BACRIM have become the main source of human rights abuses. Regional power players who are opposed to a peace deal with guerrillas may hire them as private armies to oppose attempts to return stolen land to victims and oppose the future participation of demobilized FARC in politics.

The main neo-paramilitary group is the Úsuga clan, also known as Urabeños, or Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or Clan del Golfo. They use Uraba and Chocó region, with coastlines on both the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, as corridors to move drugs from Putumayo, Valle del Cauca region, and the interior of the country.

In one of their training schools in Ungía, Chocó, authorities came upon documents stating, “By 2018, the Gaitanist Self-Defense Forces of Colombia will be an armed political actor looking to negotiate with the national government.” They mask themselves as political by indoctrinating with the works of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, who spoke against politicking and corruption. Authorities also uncovered significant amounts of their organizational material, including internal statutes, combat manuals, and discipline records. Authorities intercepted weapons, uniforms, and other equipment. (Does it not sound like they copied the FARC’s order of business?)

The leaders of the “Gaitanists” are “Otoniel” and “Marcos Gavilan,” men who have forged their careers over three decades fighting in various groups, including the EPL guerillas.

See: FARC’s ten-year-old errand boy grows up to become its most cold-blooded.

4. The ELN.

Though perceived as a minor guerrilla force, made up of up to 3,000 members, the ELN also acts like the FARC. However, the ELN’s decision-making is more horizontal — “democratic” in elena (from ELN) terminology –- than the FARC’s. They tended to disagree with the elitist character of the negotiations in Havana, where select negotiators have taken decisions affecting the whole country. For this reason, the ELN may absorb FARC members who are hard-core Marxists and hence disenchanted with the accords.

5. The Mexican Cartels.

In recent years, Mexican drug trafficking organizations have sought out alliances with the FARC to purchase coca paste, the raw material for cocaine, at the source, and so control the entire chain of distribution and a greater sum of its profits.

In December 2015, a computer confiscated from the FARC’s Southern Bloc commander Jose Benito Cabrera, alias ‘Fabian Ramirez,’ reportedly contained information speaking of the business alliance with the Mexicans.

Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel controls 35% of the cocaine exported from Colombia, reported El Tiempo in July 2015. Sinaloa’s second-in-command, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, reportedly directs the cartel’s Colombian business dealings through two Mexicans based in the country, “Jairo Ortiz” and “Montiel” — both aliases. There was a manhunt for three middle-men allegedly working for Sinaloa Cartel leader alias Joaquin Guzman Loera, alias ‘El Chapo,’ in Colombia.

The Sinaloa has operatives in at least 17 Mexican states and operations in up to 50 countries, including Peru Ecuador, and Costa Rica.

The FARC were also associates of the now-splintered Tijuana  and Juarez Cartels.

See: Mexican Cartels Marking Territory in Colombia, Allying with Bacrim and FARC

6. Illegal mining.

The FARC and the Sinaloa Cartel worked together in the illegal exploitation of coltan in Colombia, according to Insight Crime. Coltan is a mineral from which tantalum is extracted, and is used in the creation of electronics such as cell phones and computer parts.

There will be little to prevent the Sinaloa Cartel from controlling the illegal mining.

See: Phase II: Unregulated mining and logging create new conflicts and displace more people. and Chocó: forced recruitment, illegal gold mining, cocaine industry.

 

 

 

This morning, an email made me look up from the piles of papers scattered on my floor.

The Jockey Club, traditionally, was a place off boundaries unless you were a white male and part of Bogotá’s elite. I was barred from entering unless accompanied by a male member. At the Jockey Club, through the decades, you found men and their spouses were clones of one another: they were educated at the same schools in Bogotá, and they married into the same circle. Along with the membership at the Jockey Club, families inherited their political alliances. The men were used to rotating government posts, including the presidency.

In 1958, representatives of the white men of Bogotá’s Jockey Club negotiated an ending to the civil war of “La Violencia.” The Liberal Alberto Lleras and the Conservative Laureano Gómez met in Benidorm, a beach town in Spain, where they agreed to alternate governing parties every four years, for a period of sixteen years, from 1958 to 1974. The Declaration of Benidorm of 1958, or the National Front, locked out any independents or any other political party. Naturally, at the time, the supporters of the Communist and Socialist Parties were disenchanted with the agreement. They continued to feel they had no voice in the government, which was their initial seed to embrace the Communist and Socialist ideas, and eventually came to be one of the reasons they armed themselves and irrevocably took up guerrilla warfare.

In 1964, Manuel Marulanda, the FARC’s founder, wrote to the Conservative President León Valencia, who had been appointed to office as a result of the National Front agreement. According to FARC ideologue Jacobo Arenas and historian Arturo Alape,* Marulanda expressed: “ .. Our ‘crime’ that has earned us the rage of the oligarchy and of the military heads is our opposition to the bipartisan system of the oligarchic ‘National Front,’ which we consider anti-democratic and anti-national ..”

* Quote from Jacobo Arenas, Diario de la resistencia de Marquetalia. (Colombia: Abejo Mono, 1972.) P. 17. Also found in Arturo Alape, Las Vidas de Pedro Antonio Marín Manuel Marulanda Vélez Tirofijo. (Santafé de Bogotá: Planeta, 1989.) P. 323.

Colombians seemingly have not learned much from history. Many people have been expressing, for as long as the current negotiations have been going on, that they have no voice in the peace table in Havana.

This morning, I received in my email, a petition to Give Afro-Colombian and Indigenous Peoples a Voice at the current Peace Table.

More information here.

How many more “peace tables” do we need for an inclusive robust democratic Colombia?

It is tiring to read in today’s papers, the same debates that occurred fifty years ago, only that the same roles are now being played by new actors. Will our children be reading the same sorts of headlines, and receiving the same sorts of petitions?

Related:

Gov.’s female negotiators must get FARC’s female negotiators on board about gender.

The absence of women at the negotiating table is shocking.

Posted by: Paula Delgado-Kling | September 17, 2015

Gone to re-write!

Friends!

I am buried in a re-write. You will find my nose in this pile.

FullSizeRender

Posted by: Paula Delgado-Kling | June 8, 2015

First transgender woman running for mayor of small town in Antioquia.

While Caitlyn Jenner graces the cover of Vanity Fair and the world speaks of her beauty, Alondra Metaute, a 38-year-old transgender Colombian woman, is running for mayor of Sopetrán, a small town in Antioquia in north central Colombia.

“They (the men) would catcall and wanted to touch me in public,” she said of first appearing as a transgender. “But right from the start I made sure I’d be respected. I had to slap one or two men in the face, and once got into a real fight with someone who tried to to pee on me.”

She inherited a desire to enter politics from her dad. She is a candidate of the left-wing Alternative Democratic Pole, and she is the first transgender woman to have received political training from Politics for Women, an equal-opportunity initiative started by the regional government. If she wins the vote, she would be the first transgender mayor in Colombia.

#goalondra.

Here’s to waiting for the world to speak of Alondra’s politics.

Today, May 27, marks the 51st anniversary of the FARC’s founding.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: This video, made by the FARC, explains the FARC version of how the conflict began:

May 1964: One thousand and two hundred campesinos, men, women and children, were gathered in an abandoned hacienda, “Marquetalia,” on the border of the departments of Tolima, Huila and Cauca. The fog and the luscious plant life made it the ideal hiding place for these Communists fleeing from the government’s army. Forty-two families, along with pigs, sheep, string sacs filled with coal for the cooking fires, coffee, soap, and blocks of salt also made its way up the mountains, to one of its highest peaks from where they could keep an eye out; the army was expected any day. The cabbage and the carrots were atop the boxes containing dynamite, and the mules logged it up one step at a time. The heavy rain turned the paths into landslides, and some mules went tumbling down. All dogs were slain because their barking gave them away. Thirty-five year-old Pedro Antonio Marín’s job was to instruct the FARC’s original thirty soldiers. He’d already gained the name “Sureshot” (“Tirofijo”) for his deadly accuracy; he later became the legend behind the FARC. 

Isaias Pardo, Sureshot’s brother-in-law, was there. “Do not think that we are powerless because we are not,” he said. “We can be confused for this jungle. We are the water. We are one with these trees.” His calm self was transformed and he was adamant—“Quicker!”—about in which dirt roads they should plant land mines.

For two years, this Communist commune had taxed people, a cow here, a bucket of milk there. They also printed their own communist money to pay corrupt judges. In locales under their control, there were no civilian authorities who answered to the national government and anyone who entered or left had to get a permit. There were the first incidents of forced recruitment of minors. The government called the area of Marquetalia an enclave and called for its invasion.

On June 15, 1964, at six in the morning, the families watched sixteen thousand well-equipped government soldiers land in the mountains of Marquetalia. Smoke rose from the family’s burnt homes in the valley beneath.

Sureshot instructed the men to make their way to the high mountaintops. “And bring along the long-range arms,” he said.

There were fallen branches, swamps, quicksand, and in the distance, they heard government soldiers cutting down trees, then two hundred and fifty of the government’s best trained and most agile threw themselves off DC-3’s and C-47 planes. Their bombs shook the ground every few minutes. The army helped an Indian chief, who had health problems, and so earned the trust of his immediate clan. The natives helped the army lug along 60-mm mortars and machine guns.

Isaias Pardo and a few others were mid-mountain, planting more land mines. Around every one hundred meters, there was a grenade or a land mine explosion. Atop, Sureshot’s men were already firing and the government’s reinforcements could not land.

The survivors founded the FARC. That was the beginning of this war story.

Additional Sources:

Alape, Arturo. Las Vidas de Pedro Antonio Marín Manuel Marulanda Vélez Tirofijo. (Santafé de Bogotá: Planeta, 1989.)

Arango Zuluaga, Carlos. Guerrillas FARC-EP: cronicas y testimonios de guerra. (Bogotá: Ediciones Anteo Ltd., 1984.)

Arenas, Jacobo. Diario de la resistencia de Marquetalia. (Colombia: Abejo Mono, 1972.)

Buenaventura, Nicolás. Cuadernos de historia del Partido Colombiano Comunista No. 2. (Bogotá: Editorial Colombia Nueva Ltda, 1990.)

Henderson, James D. When Colombia Bled: History of Violence in Colombia. (Alabama: University of Alabama Press, 1985.)

Jaramillo Echeverri, Marino. Oposición y violencia en Colombia. (1920-1934). (Santa Fé de Bogotá: Ediciones Academica Colombiana de Jurisprudencia, 2003.)

Medina, Medofilo. Historia del partido Comunista, tomo I. (Bogotá: CEIS, Centro de estudios e investigaciones sociales, 1980.)

Moncada Abello, Alonso. Un Aspecto de la Violencia. (Bogotá: Promotora Colombiana de Ediciones y Revistas, 1963.)

Oviedo, Alvaro. Trabajo de Masas del Partido Comunista. (Bogotá: Fondo editorial suramérica, coleccion educación, 1979.)

The deputy prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, James Stewart, traveled to Colombia recently. Again, he highlighted that those responsible for heinous crimes need to be punished.

Stewart said the ICC continues its “preliminary examination” of Colombia’s possible transitional justice.

The ICC is the only judicial body with the power to intervene. Besides the crimes committed by the FARC (and now the ELN should they start peace negotiations), Stewart also expressed concern for the extrajudicial killings, known as false positives, committed by the military, and for the horrific sexual crimes committed by the paramilitaries.

Likewise, Colombia’s Attorney General Alejandro Ordoñez said justice cannot be a staged farce but must respect the minimum international standards of justice.

(See: Colombia’s Attorney General Ordoñez is doing his job.)

The business community also asks for a stronger judicial system. As the president of the financial Group Sura, David Bojanini, put it: “If we don’t have a solid judicial system, it is very difficult for the country to have peace. Now we speak of not accepting impunity and of transitional justice, but if we don’t have ordinary justice we will not have transitional justice.”

A loss of confidence for the future of the peace negotiations has surfaced from the fact that the Santos government has not yet expressed, even hinted, how transitional justice will be applied to the FARC, and possibly the ELN, as well as the paramilitaries and military involved in heinous crimes.

(See: Shocking to hear FARC and President Santos speak of ICC in same vein.)

The world cannot forget when FARC negotiator Jesus Santrich was asked if the FARC would ask forgiveness from their victims. He replied, “maybe, maybe, maybe.”

According to Leonardo Goi, a researcher at Fundación Ideas Para la Paz, a risk of transitional justice is that it may be tilted in favor of the guerrillas: while the FARC militants would enjoy the benefits of transitional justice, the government’s army would not.

But, Goi asks, how could the government ever justify a guerrilla militant being allowed to walk free upon repenting for his crimes, and a military official being kept for years in prison?

And so peace talks appear to be at an impasse.

Peace Commissioner Sergio Jaramillo issued a stark warning: “This is our last chance (for peace). This is the last generation of FARC that is both military and political, the last of FARC as a university-educated political movement with Marxist politics we disagree with, but they are at least politics. The generation coming up behind them know only jungle and war.”

Related:

ICC’s eyes on Colombia’s Transitional Justice.

Time to (again) watch “Impunity,” a film by Hollman Morris and Juan Jose Lozano.

Justice is Achilles heel.

Colombia’s transitional law likely to end in impunity for many victimizers.

Posted by: Paula Delgado-Kling | May 18, 2015

Journalist Antonio Salas on “How is a Terrorist Made?”

palestino 01

Antonio Salas has immersed himself as an under-cover investigative reporter many times. For six years, he trained to adopt the identity of “Muhammad Abdallah,” a Venezuelan man of Palestinian origin. During this time, Salas learned written and spoken Arabic. He studied the Quran, and memorized fragments of it which he wrote out in traditional calligraphy. He also underwent a circumcision and skin-darkening treatments, and grew a long beard. He gave up pork, smoking, and drinking. He took classes alongside anti-terrorist specialists and policemen.

To test his new identity as “Muhammad Abdallah,” he traveled to Morocco, Jordan, Israel, and Palestine. In Ramallah, he learned the psychology of terrorists: the trauma and frustration many face, which is, in turn, harnessed by extremists.

Then, in 2006, he set off for Venezuela because, as he says in the video, “the place in the world where a terrorist can be born was Venezuela.”

His intention was to find out — how is a terrorist made? (My question to Salas is — what is his motivation as an investigative reporter?)

In Venezuela, he found the presence of ETA, FARC, Colombian paramilitary groups, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and clumps of Venezuela’s Bolivarian groups whose members converted to Islam.

The result is a book and the video, embedded below, which was filmed while under-cover using a tiny hidden camera.

** WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC IMAGES ** 

Older Posts »

Categories

%d bloggers like this: