United against the State?

United against the State?

The BBC have implied that the Colombian left-wing guerrilla group FARC and the right-wing paramilitary organization AUC have and may continue to unify themselves through “non-aggression pacts”. James J. Brittain of the University of New Brunswick, Canada, examines this version.

29.11.2004 [James J. Brittain*, ANNCOL] One must question the integrity and intelligence of the Western Press when they read analyses such as those offered recently by the BBC.

The country of Colombia has experienced an internal conflict waged against the people of Colombia for over four decades. While tens of thousands of Colombians who have mobilized for social change have been killed and over 3 million have been forcefully displaced from the homes and communities over this period, the State has been largely unable to decrease the support and expansion of class-consciousness and struggle coming from the people.

This is realized in the fact that the State has failed to implement any sustained or functional attack against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP). Not only has the insurgency become the longest running guerrilla movement in the Western hemisphere but it has also formed itself to be the most powerful political force opposing domestic capitalism and foreign imperialist interests within Colombia.

In hopes of crushing the FARC-EP the Colombian State, with the political, economic, and militaristic assistance and training of the United States, has implemented governmentally imposed displacement tactics, aerial fumigation, mass military bombardment, rural executions and disappearances, and so on. None of which incidentally have succeeded in weeding out the people’s insurgent army.

In response to this failure, the government, between 1993 and 1994, legalized the formation of private security forces to protect the private material and ideological interests of those who could afford it, the ruling class. What came from Decree 365 was the legitimized inception and objective creation of paramilitary forces, in alignment with the State army, to mobilize throughout the country with the sole purpose of combating the FARC-EP and Marxist ideology within Colombia.

In understanding all of the above it is incredibly strange then to hear what the BBC have recently stated concerning ties between the FARC-EP and the paramilitary within the ravaged civil-war torn country.

The BBC have implied that the FARC-EP and the AUC (the primary paramilitary organization within the country); two groups that have been ideological, politically, and militarily devoted to completely opposing sociopolitical and economic models of societal existence, have and may continue to unify themselves through “non-aggression pacts”.

This past November 25, 2004 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4040567.stm) BBC issued that the people’s insurgency and the paramilitary may “put aside there differences” and “unite” against the Colombian State.

To any analyst of Colombian issues and social mobilizations within the Andean region this notion, on the surface, is incredibly amusing. The proposition that a Marxist-Leninist movement would sit down in solidarity with a fascistic organization, which not only eliminates proletarian interests but also seeks to “defend” the Colombian ruling class, is preposterous. In a recent public address, President Uribe issued that the internal paramilitary forces “defend” the nation of Colombia, while the guerrilla “threaten” it.

On another level this notion in enraging. The paramilitary is a group that was viscously incepted and legitimated by the Colombian State and ruling class to ‘drain the sea’ of support for the guerrilla through rape (both male and female – child and adult), torture, decapitation, disembowelment, intimidation and murder.

The FARC-EP has consistently issued itself to be the Ejercito del Pueblo throughout its existence and has exemplified this positioning through its social, economic, political, armed, and cultural policies when possible, as tangibly illustrated in San Vicente del Caguán during the demilitarized zone (1999-2002). Therefore, to publish that the AUC and the FARC-EP could even be in the same room is ludicrous and of the utmost irresponsible journalistic quality and truly a blatant dissemination of disinformation.

The FARC-EP was incepted and remains to be the people’s army while the AUC have and remain to be the ruling class’ excuse to try and destroy socialist revolution within the country of Colombia. That any information medium, especially one as “reputable” as the BBC, would issue anything other than this should be of great concern to not only the Colombia people but also to the international community.

*James J. Brittain is a lecturer and Ph.D. candidate of sociology at the University of New Brunswick, Canada

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