Colombians want peace, but ask to also include the issue of social justice (translation)

Originally published at: http://www.revistadebate.net/revista_debate_wp/?p=4510

Posted By: editor December 2, 2015

Felipe Rangel Uncacia and Francisco Ramírez Cuellar during a conversation with the Latin American community in Toronto.

OSCAR VIGIL / TORONTO /

Colombia appears to be starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, given the end of the bloody armed conflict that has been going on for more than 50 years and left 220,000 deaths could be settled in the month of March of the coming year. But Colombia needs something more than the silencing of rifles, it needs a peace with social justice, explained the two leaders in Toronto last week.


Felipe Rangel Uncacia is an indigenous leader of the U’wa people of Arauca, Colombia, spokesperson of the Original Nations and land defender with the Association of Town Councils and Indigenous Authorities of the Department of Arauca, who assures that it is important that the dialogue between the Colombian government and the guerrillas might be taking up the issue because it is the problem that the peasants, the indigenous and African-descended peoples principally experience.


“There are many social problems in our communities, in our towns, and what we expect is that it truly acclimates and lowers the level of intensity of the conflict that we experience in Colombia. But the conflict is caused by certain factors: first by the state abandonment that the government has had for peasant, African-descended and indigenous communities in the country, and the other, also because the government has been implementing many policies that destroy the environment, that destroy everything related to the territory and it also has policies that go against a process for the Indigenous peoples and against all of society in general”, he assured.


Concretely, the Indigenous leader said that it should negotiate also the issue of the socio-economic model by which Colombia can reach a just and lasting peace.

“This process is of great importance because it is important that the war ends, but at the same time we need the government to commit itself and look more at the social issue, that is the most important. We have said also that it is important to converse about the issue of the economic model, because they are structural issues that have been affecting noticeably the Colombian people”, he explained.


Rangel Uncacia come to Canada to tour different cities of the country explaining what the situation is like for the peasant, indigenous and African-descended population, particularly in the context in which they are at the point of reaching the last agreements necessary for the signing of a peace agreement between the Colombian government and the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

In Toronto he was special guest of the Colombia Action Solidarity Alliance (CASA) in diverse activities with the Canadian, Latin American and Colombian communities, and in some of them accompanied by another special guest, the union leader, Francisco Ramírez Cuellar, member of the legal team of the United Federation of Workers (la Central Unitaria de Trabajadores), and responsible for the international legal actions in the civil jurisdiction of the United States, England and Canada.


Ramírez Cuellar also agreed that the Colombian peace process has remained limited in its scope. “That is a political negotiation that is necessary to do it because it disarms one part of the armed conflict, but we think that while it doesn't discuss the economic model, that is the motor that generates the violence, the inequality, the social, environmental problems, etc., of Colombian society, there there isn't going to be any possibility of peace”, he assured.

The negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC, which take place in the city of Havana, Cuba, started formally on the 18^th of October, 2012 and comprised of four phases, the first was the stage of secret rapprochement , later the settlement of the agreements (in which it finds itself at the moment), the third is the ratification by referendum of the agreements and the fourth will be the implementation of these agreements.

In these rounds of negotiations, in which the highest leaders of the FARC, as well as high representatives of the Colombian government participate, have been addressing five topics: policy of comprehensive agricultural development, political participation, the end of the conflict, the solution to the problem of illegal drugs and reparations for the victims. A sixth separate topic will be address the issue of the implementation, verification and ratification through referendum of the agreements.

The agricultural issue is included, but both leaders agree that the scope of the issue will be minimal, for which it is necessary a wider and deeper negotiation that includes the social and economic issue. In contrast, the process is going to remain only in “a negotiation and a peace process, between quotation marks, like what South Africa, El Salvador and Guatemala had, that was a total failure, and new forms of social violence are going to emerge that express the application of a criminal model”, explained Ramírez Cuellar.

On her part, Sandra Cordero, co-ordinator of Colombia Action Solidarity Alliance (CASA) and organiser of the tour, said that many Canadians of Colombian origin that live in Toronto agree with the approach of the two leaders.

“Peace is being negotiated between two organisations to get rid of the armed link, that is very good, but in their agenda the issue of the neoliberal system or globalisation isn't included, and if this topic isn't there, there isn't going to be social justice, there isn't going to healthcare for the people, there isn't going to be public services or education or work”, she pointed out.

Guerrero: a history of social struggle, chiefdoms and poverty (translation)

This article was originally published at: http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2014/10/28/actualidad/1414457377_371609.html

Massacre in Iguala

The violence in the state corresponds to a long history of guerrillas, confrontations, chiefdom and poverty

• The 43 disappeared students in Iguala were assassinated
  

Verónica Calderón México 8 NOV 2014 - 01:05 CET

A student from the Ayotzinapa teacher-training college. To the right, an image of Lucio Cabañas. / José Méndez (EFE)

The 43 Mexican student teachers assassinated the last 26^th of September belong to the Rural Teacher-Training School of Ayotzinapa, a tiny mountain community of scarcely a hundred inhabitants in Guerrero, in the south of Mexico and one of its poorest states. But it isn't the first time that the word has resounded in the ears of the country. The Mexican guerrilla, Lucio Cabañas, also graduated from that Rural Teacher-Training School, from Ayotzinapa. Cabañas founded the Party of the Poor, an armed group that in 1974 kidnapped the senator – who became a governor a year after - Rubén Figueroa Figueroa. The event, from 40 years ago, recalls that Guerrero bears a long history of poverty, forget, chiefdom and violence: a cocktail that the massacre in Iguala, ordered by the municipal mayor himself according to the investigations, has left bare.

At least 14 of the 80 municipalities of Guerrero have already been taken over by federal forces in the month that has passed since the tragedy, but the violence has gone up for a long time. Its winding geography of mountains doesn't make access to the towns easy. Meanwhile a quarter of its 3.4 million inhabitants live in Acapulco, that have the third highest rate of homicides in the world, only surpassed by San Pedro Sula (Honduras) and Caracas (Venezuela), according to the figures of the Citizen's Council for Security and Peace. Not even talking about the other towns. The crossing of the Sierra Madre and those of the south turn into paths that appear impregnable at a distance and fertile terrain for a network of chiefdoms that are decades old.

You only have to follow the trail of some of its leaders to understand the reach of that network of chiefdoms and their reason for existence. The poverty that extends to the other 80 municipalities of Guerrero oblige the majority of its inhabitants (men, women, children) to wander all over the country to work as harvesters in the crops of tomato in Sinaloa, apples in Chihuahua or chilli peppers in Guanajuato and, together with their neglible wages, surviving thanks to federal subsidies managed, on many occasions, but their regional leaders.

The case of Cabañas and Figuero is emblematic. Their confrontations is one of the episodes of the Dirty War in Mexico: the period of political and military repression carried out in the sixties and seventies whose objective was dissolving armed and political opposition movements against the dominant party of the country, the PRI¹.

Cabañas' movement initiated demonstrations, at the start peaceful, to denounce the poverty of the populations and the confrontation, each time greater, between the peasants and the regional chiefs. “The chiefs have been the people that do everything, make themselves authorities, buy cheap harvests, manage the economy as they please. The governments relied on the chiefs for nothing other than the promotion of voting, they were the leaders that used to do everything: but that brought as a consequence difficulties, because the rest of the people want to develop themselves, they want to study, they want to get better health-wise, they want that their family might get ahead”, affirms Evaristo Castañón, peasant from El Quemado, a community from Atoyac, 100 kilometres from Acapulco, in an investigation by the George Washington University.

Cabañas, that carried out guerrilla activities for at least 10 years, ordered the kidnapping of Figueroa (then a senator and in a political campaign for the governorship of Guerrero) the 30^th of May 1974. The event shook the country. He was liberated in a military operation on the 8^th of September of that same year, but the U.S. embassy doubted that it might not have paid a ransom, such as has been demanded by Cabañas, according to a cable from the State Department revelled by Wikileaks in 2011. Figueroa became the governor of his state in April 1975. By then, Cabañas had already died in a conflict with the Mexican army in December of the previous year.

Upon the arrival of Vicente Fox, from the conservative National Action Party (PAN) in 2000, the Special Prosecution's Office for Past Political and Social Movements was created in 2002, to clear up the disappearances, assassinations and repression that occurred during that period. Rubén Figueroa Figueroa was filled with pride that they might have given him the nickname The Tiger of Huitzuco, and his son, Rubén Figueroa Alcocer, followed in his footsteps in politics and also became governor of the state until another scandal obliged him to leave the position. The massacre of Aguas Blancas, occurred in 1995. A group of peasants, that were walking to a demonstration to demand freedom for a rural leader, were ambushed by the police. Seventeen died and 21 were injured. Figueroa's initial version was that the officers “had been attacked first”. A video also showed that what happened had been an ambush against unarmed civilians. The successor of Figueroa? Ángel Aguirre Rivero, that later would decide to insist in returning to hold the position, now through the ballot box and in the ranks of another party, now the PRD², in 2010. He held the post until Thursday the 23^rd of October, obliged by the pressure of another massacre: this time the one of Ayotzinapa.

The loose ends finish with the recently named interim governor of Guerrero: Salvador Rogelio Ortega. In his inauguration speech, Ortega mentioned his mother, Rosaura Martínez, also a teacher. The journalist Roberto Ramírez Bravo remembers that, in the times of the dirty war, Ortega was detained by the police and illegally held prisoner. His mother was to receive an award for 20 years of work as a teacher at the hands of the governor, Rubén Figueroa Figueroa, The Tiger of Huitzuco himself. She refused to receive the diploma and faced him head-on. Ortega was let go a little afterwards.

1PRI - Institutional Revolutionary Party, Mexican political party. Its modern policies of neo-liberalism and privatization have been characterized as centrist or even as Centre-right

2 The Party of the Democratic Revolution (Spanish: Partido de la Revolución Democrática, PRD) is a social democratic political party in Mexico that advocates for democracy.

Armed Violence and Police in Mexico (translation)

Originally published at: http://www.animalpolitico.com/blogueros-seguridad-180/2015/08/03/violencia-armada-y-policia-en-mexico/
 
August 3, 2015

By: Paulina Arriaga Carrasco

Losing life is the most terrible consequence of armed violence. In 5 years (2009-2013) more than 80 thousand people died in Mexico from homicides with firearms. 44 per day. 66% of the homicides in the country were committed with this type of weapon, in Europe this percentage is only 13%, in Africa it is 28%, and the world average is 41%.[i]

The paradox is that Mexico has restrictive legislation in relation to the possession of arms and it is part of all the existing international organisations that monitor the control of them. We might say that, on the formal level, Mexico fulfills the requisites of the diligent and responsible State.

Even with all the legislative and international constraints, arms abound in our country. Academic estimations note that annually 250 thousand firearms enter in an illegal manner from the United States,[ii] other studies indicate that 24 million arms exist in our country.[iii] But where do these weapons come from? It is certain that 70% of those that are checked and verified by the Mexican government come from the US.[iv] Although illegal smuggling from the north is clearly a problem, not all the weapons “reach us from there”.

Institutional weakness, corruption and impunity in the country also make their contribution. Between 2006 and 2014, more than 17 thousand firearms were reported as lost or stolen by the police,[v] more than 150 per month. To put that into perspective, we can compare this figure with the number (officially accepted) of arms involved in the Operation Fast and Furious: in 5 years they dealt -with the consent of the US government- more than 2 thousand firearms.

The figure includes the arms lost or stolen from the state Ministries of Public Security and Attorney General's Offices, as well as the Attorney General's Office of the Republic (PGR), the Federal Police, Centre of Investigation and National Security (CISEN) and the Federal Protection Service. It's worth considering that the level of irresponsibility isn't uniform, just the Federal District, the state of Mexico, Guerrero, Durango and the federal institutions contribute 50% to the total of missing weapons. At the federal level the PGR and the Federal Police take the cake, they have lost 470 weapons each.

If we can't control the legal weapons, for which there exist registers and that came to Mexico under the supervision of Ministry of National Defense (Sedena), how will we be able to combat the illegal trade?

Sedena has the problem well identified. In 2014, the then director of the Federal Register of Firearms and Explosives, General Juan de Dios Bolaños, attacked the police in a public event in the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He commented that, in contrast to them -the army-, the police don't receive punishment for losing arms:

[…] sometimes we also as authorities, we are responsible for selling our own weapons. It is a problem that we have here lately with the police […] I don't know how they make it so easy to say “I lost 20 weapons, I can't find 150 weapons” but they make it very easy.[vi]

The weapons that enter legally to our country for the police aren't exempt from being used in a bad way (in the violation of human rights) or diverted to the black market. The diversion of weapons and the elements for the good management of arsenals are set out in various international organisations of which Mexico is not only a part, but has actively promoted. Lamentably the enthusiastic international participation hasn't seen itself reflected in every day life.

In 2008 Mexico hosted the second conference of States part of the Inter-american Convention against the Illicit Manufacture and Trade of Fire Arms (CIFTA), in 2010 the meeting of the Action Program for the prevention, combat and elimination of illicit trade of small and light arms in all its aspects (POA) and in a few weeks the first meeting of States part of the Treaty on Arms Trade (ATT) will be in Cancún.

The ATT seeks to reduce the suffering caused by armed violence, one of its fundamental aspects is preventing the diversion of legal arms to unauthorised users. Behind the optimism of the existence of this treaty, that without doubt is historic, Mexicans come up against an extremely complex reality to deal with. These diversions, I can assure it, won't be resolved with technical details of improvements in the security of warehouses or gun storehouses. The loss and robbery of weapons is a symptom more of what in this space (Animal Pólitico) has written Maru Suárez de Garay:

[…] the problem doesn't centre only on “diverted” behaviours -the thesis of the rotten apple- but on a series of institutionalised practices that are the results of the form in which the organisational structure of the police has been linked with political power, producing favourable conditions for corruption and the exercise of diverse illegal and extra-institutional forms of police conduct.[vii]

The presence of weapons that fall into the hands of unauthorised people doesn't only depend on corruption and impunity on our borders, but also on the that existing in the police stations, and that is one piece of the puzzle that is dealt with very little. This reality entails admitting internal responsibility and leaving behind the thinking that all the problem comes from abroad. Without doubt this theme is a point of convergence among those who strive to transform the police and those who wish to reduce armed violence in Mexico.

I invite them to follow here the work that [Des]arma México y Casede are carrying out about this and other issues in the National Observatory of Armed and Gender Violence. #OVAG.

* Paulina Arriaga Carrasco is founder and executive director of [Des]arma México. Facebook DesArmaMéxico Twitter @desarmamex Collaborated with Vania Ruiz and Dorena Estrada.




[i] Oficina de las Naciones Unidas contra la Droga y el Delito, Estudio mundial sobre el Homicidio 2013, p. 6.
[ii] David A. Shirk, et.al., The Way of the Gun: Estimating Firearms Traffic Across the U.S.-Mexico Border, Estados Unidos, Igarapé Institute y Transborder Institute de la Universidad de San Diego, 2013, p.15.
[iii] Eugenio Weigend, Íñigo Guevara, “How many illegal guns are there in Mexico? Probably more than you think”, El Daily Post, 3 de junio de 2014.
[iv] Department of Justice, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Mexico, Estados Unidos, 2015. Consulta aquí.
[v] Respuesta de Seden a solicitud de información, Folio 000700205114
[vi]  Bolaños, Juan de Dios, Mesa de Discusión Tráfico de Armas en México, Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, auditorio Guillermo Floris Margadant,  26 de junio 2014.
[vii] María Eugenia Suárez de Garay, “Del autoempleo en el mundo policial (Segunda Parte)”, Animal Político, 8 de junio de 2015.