The Profits of Ignorance in Colombia

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Monday February 11, 2008 16:11 by Mairtin MacMaolain mairtin at o2 dot ie

How knowing very little can save your conscience in Colombia

Upon leaving the Westlink and heading right towards the heartland of Belfast Republicanism at the bottom of the Grosvenor Road is written on a low wall one of the more thoughtful pieces of graffiti associated with this troubled town. "Nil mar a shíltear a bhítear" it reads, which translates as "that which is thought is not that which necessarily is". Accompanying this defiant meesage is another equally penetrating statement "I am not your stereotype".

The profits of Ignorance in Colombia
Upon leaving the Westlink and heading right towards the heartland of Belfast Republicanism at the bottom of the Grosvenor Road is written on a low wall one of the more thoughtful pieces of graffiti associated with this troubled town. "Nil mar a shíltear a bhítear" it reads, which translates as "that which is thought is not that which necessarily is". Accompanying this defiant meesage is another equally penetrating statement "I am not your stereotype". Clearly this part of the Belfast community has felt it necessary to say to the many thousands passing by this wall everyday, to think again about West Belfast and what might be commonly negatively peceived about their community, in this case a people who have lived through and experienced much of the violence of the thirty years of trouble in the north of Ireland. And of course, they are right. What has happened and been reported in the mass media in the past at any given time should not solely be allowed to colour one's perception of a people, given that many other things happen throughout the years that are never reported yet are widely known by the people living there and anyone curious enough to find out what exactly has made this much maligned community what it is and not what it is thought to be.
And so we come to the whole question of ignorance. When should one be able to express an opinion on any given topic? When they have experienced first hand what they are talking about? When they have read one book on the topic? When they have read every book going on the topic? Or when someone they trust tells them how it is? Or perhaps it is all of these and more. One thing is for certain though, it takes a lot of effort to have an informed opinion. It requires reflection and evaluation not only of yourself and your values but those of the people with whom you engage in discussion about the topic. And even then opinions can change based on a fresh analysis of new information and deeper exploration of old or new evidence. No wonder ignorance is bliss. Better to just close your eyes and ears, content yourself with what you believe to be true and if someone challenges you on it, revert to the old tradition of never discussing politics or religion between friends, lest you should fall out over it!
These very days in Colombia a civil war is raging. People, human beings with families, flesh and blood that require the same needs as all human beings throughout the world are currently being tortured, massacred, disappeared, kidnapped, displaced from their homes, lives ruined and lives destroyed. It is war after all. War is bloody mayhem and war war can bring out the worst in human beings and de-sentitise them to suffering. Moreover, war doesn't work. It kills the innocent and destroys the earth. In light of this, there are many in Colombia and throughout the world that are willing to sacrifice their comfortable lifestyles and world-views to get to the truth of what is a ctually happening in Colombia and what can be done to achieve peace. Peace with justice though. The absence of violence only will never bring about the type of peace that in its fullest sense will enable a better society to emerge from the flames of a conflict that have eft its murderous mark on Colombia for over forty years. Therefore, it is necessary and essential that people who want to work for true peace in Colombia, that with justice, attempt to grapple with a full understanding the situation there and come to conclusions that are based on a thorough examination of the evidence available.
Ask an everyday Irish person on the street what words spring to mind when they think of Colombia and the usual replies will come up: cocaine, drugs, war, and the FARC. The sterotype of the Colombian who smuggles white powder all over the world and is working for a rich cartel in the face of a state-led attempt to stop the flow of drugs will be one very familiar to many Colombians who have travelled the world. For most countries in the world, Colombians need a visa to enter and it is not uncommon for many to be randomly detained in immigration offices in whatever country they care to enter to answer banal questions about why they are travelling while their luggage is subjected to repeated searches. Such is the stero-type of a people. So what are they in Colombian doing in order to challenge this label abroad? Well, as it happens, there are some who are very happy with this pigeon-holing of a proud people.
"Plan Colombia", where the US administration has been bank-rolling an apparent drive by the Colombian Government to launch a 'war on drugs', lends itself very nicely to stero-typing the Colombian people as a nation of cocaine industrialists. The Government of President Alvaro Uribe can position itself through control of the mass-media in Colombia as the defender of democracy and law in a country where anything but is the case, particularly in the case of the State. It has successfully cast the guerrilla movements of the FARC and ELN as failitators of the huge cocaine industry along with the different cartels competing with each other as the main proponents of the drugs trade in Colombia. Therefore, 80% of the money which reaches the Colombian government is set aside for boosting the prowess of the Colombian army through the purchasing of weapons, military installments and incrasing the numbers in the armed forces. This of course is presented as necessary as the guerilla movements, who are seen to exist for their own ends and finance themselves through the drugs trade, must be destroyed if the world is to be rid of that great evil white powder. Much is written about the heroism of the Colombian armed forces in their daily sacrifices to defeat these guerilla forces, who are painted as the cause of the western world's addiction to mind altering substances, terrorists whose only aim is to destroy that which could be good but doesn't exist due to their presence in Colombia. However, little is written about the darker side of "Plan Colombia" and it's knock-on effects for the behaviour of the Colombian army and its involvment with the feared and ruthless paramilitaries in keeping Colombian society in an ever-increasing flux of poverty and death.
With a 60% level of poverty and the majority of the wealth being concentrated in very few hands, Colombian has one of the worst records of inequality in the world today. For a country so rich resourcefully in oil, gold, water, gas, coffee and so on, this is nothing short of a scandal in these days when human beings are seen to be at the higher scale of development as a species. However, Colombia is not unique by any means and the reasons for its vastly diverse living standards are not surprising and even less difficult to uncover. Put simply, the rich elite in Colombia are doing very well selling off the country's treasures to outside multi-nationals who have little interest in the welfare of the people who lands and lives they are exploiting. These companies come from all over the world to marvel at the riches to be found and find it easy to persuade investors to put their money into projects which are guaranteed by the State to make them serious profit as long as the elite in Colombia gain a large slice of it. The only problem with this is, apart from denying ordinary Colombians the right to profit from their own valable resources, is that sometimes, violence must be used to guarantee the promise of multi-national profits. People who refuse to leave the land where they lived and worked for centuries are being silently massacred by right-wing paramilitaries, sometimes with the help of Colombian armed forces and with the expressed consent of the companies designed to profit from the disappearance of such opposition to their enterprises.
Many courageous defenders of human rights and opponents of injustice have documented the crimes of the state terrorism that has been inflicted upon the ordinary people of Colombia, whose only crime is to be poor/indigenous/black and living in a place where there are rich resources to be exploited. Such documentation of these crimes though have resulted in increased levels of torture, displacements, intimidation and death. Such is the price for speaking out in Colombia. To stay silent though in the face of such injustice, would though be paramount to complicity in the crimes of those with power in Colombia. The unfortunate aspect for those who do have the courage to speak out is that all too often their voice is not heard and even when it is, it is drowned by the voices who prefer to concentrate on the war crimes of the guerrillas in Colombia, even though they are responsible for 20% of the human rights abuses, while the other 80% is shared by those who are, support or pose no danger to the ruling elites in Colombia.
Last Monday 4th February 2008, marches took place throughout the world against the violence of the FARC. "No mas FARC" was the slogan used to tell the world that the FARC do not represent the wishes of the Colombian people. That may very well be so. But missing in this march was any indication of the greatest violator of human rights in Colombia, the state sector combined with paramilitarism. The people who orchestrated the march against the FARC that day may well have been motivated by the purest intentions to rid Colombia of an armed organisation that has engaged in some truly horrific crimes against the people of Colombia from every background and continues to hold people, not councillors or army-men or politicians, but people in horrific conditions in the Colombian jungle, but they have been the victims, whether willing or not, of manipulation by the government and paramilitaries to send out the message that Colombia would be a peaceful, prosperous land without the FARC. This is a lie and those who are ignorant of the full story and participated in the march have bought this lie wholesale. The only result of such a demonstration solely against the FARC is to give the government a free licence to say that the support of the "ordinary" people of Colombia is behind them as they intensify their military campaign to crush the guerrilla forces who have survived for over 40 years and show no signs of capitulation yet. With a more concentrated military offensive, will come more inncoent deaths and sufferings. And thanks to the march against the FARC, the government will be able to pass off such deaths as collateral or vicitmise the victims as guerrilla sympathisers, and this is only when news of such massacres or assasinations are deemed worthy enough by the mass media to come to the attention of the public.
The great hypocrisies of these our times in which we share the same sunlight and breathe the same air, have the potential to swallow us up and spit us out more bitter, twisted and cynical than we went in. However, as far as hope springs eternal and love inspires people from one end of the globe to the other, we remain steadfast in our opposition to injustice, committed in our struggle for true peace and determined in our shared desire for a better future in Colombia. And not just Colombia. In whatever part of the world an injustice is felt may we be comrades together. Great strides are being made in every part of the world to foster a more socially just existance for those who suffer most the indignation of poverty. We, here in Ireland should be mindful of the privileges that have been hard won by our forefathers to use the freedoms we enjoy to demand justice and solidarity with our Colombian sisters and brothers in the throes of the deep wounds of civil war. Of all countries in the west, Ireland should appreciate that what is popularly perceived is not always the case. Discernment is essential to discovering the truth and working for it. May we join hands together across the world and sing defiantly against stero-types, break the chains of ignorance and remind ourselves that in love, we can achieve so much more by working together rather than the great suffering and death that comes with division.
Máirtín MacMaoláin

On May 15th at a public meeting at 7pm in Wynns Hotel, Abbey Street, Dublin 1, delegates from a coalition of Colombian social movements (COMOSOC) will be coming to speak on their work in Colombia for the right to freedom of expression without the fear of losing their lives.